Wells is a tiny but charming town from another era with fewer than a thousand people and full of abandoned mom & pop shops along the main highway. I did not have time to really explore the town, to do it justice, so I instead concentrated on the main street and the many charming old buildings there. A single water-tower with the town’s name pokes up above the tall pine trees dead ahead on Hwy 69 as you approach the town from the North like a beacon leading you to a charming rural oasis in a lonely desert of thick, dark pine trees. Then the road suddenly narrows to two lanes briefly like an hourglass as you slowly drive through the downtown feeling like you’ve gone back to a much slower, simpler, and quieter time! Just as you begin to really feel the town’s charm, the speed limit returns to a brisk, blurry 70mph and the road suddenly widens back into a 4 lane boulevard and continues winding on through the seemingly never-ending wilderness of pine trees and often-abandoned white-framed farmhouses. There are no fast-food establishments in Wells, except for the requisite Dairy Queen, which in Texas is traditionally the sure status symbol that a small town has indeed arrived as a town!
Shot this in my car while leaving (Someone actually out enjoying the beautiful weather!)The town appeared to be even more abandoned than it actually is because it was around noon on a Sunday and everyone must have either still been in church or at home with their families since I saw almost no one out on the street. Seems nearly everyone in East Texas does go to church on Sundays. I do see more people normally when I come through Wells at other times.

I began to notice an awful lot of abandoned homes and businesses all along my route through East Texas this trip. I’m sad to confess that I have not paid that much attention before, usually being in a hurry to get from one end of this four hour journey to the other.
]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/stopping-in-wells-texas/feed/ 0 wildstar84 Downtown Main St., Wells, TX More Bygone Businesses Once-thriving business? Main Street, Wells, Texas http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/the-all-seeing-eye-of-osiris/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/the-all-seeing-eye-of-osiris/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:45:49 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=918 ]]> The All-Seeing Eye of Osiris

I am Ever-Watching! While visiting my mom last week, I found this really cool green wine bottle in her living room.  I vaguely remember it from childhood, but never paid it any mind before, but sat there staring at the green pyramid shape and the crystal prism stopper and then holding it up to my face and looking through the triangular prism.  I had one of my *rare*, artsy-creative moments when the repressed artsy side of my brain suddenly rares up in stubborn rebellion against the dominant and equally stubborn tech side.  The thought of the “All-seeing eye of Osiris” on the back of the dollar bill popped up as an image in my head.  Those of you who know me well know that I, when I get an image in my head, have to make it manifest so I can look at it, so I did a shoot requiring over a dozen takes, then created this image.  This is also one of my very rare self-portraits.  I’ve never been much into self-portraits and have always been a bit paranoid about posting high-quality images of myself on the open internet, so that was part of the reason I went for big time bokeh, to not only sharpen the image of the bottle and the eye but to blur my face out somewhat as well (for our mutual benefit)! Annuit Coeptis

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ “One of the biggest roses in the Universe!“
Found ^this^ Cool Valentine’s Day image yesterday on io9!

55 Open Source Replacements for Photo and Graphics Tools
]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/the-all-seeing-eye-of-osiris/feed/ 0 wildstar84 All-seeing Eye of Osiris http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/ongoing-linux-upgrade-etc/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/ongoing-linux-upgrade-etc/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:42:21 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=902 ]]>
Two-toned Daffodil, backlit by the sun.I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted, but I seem to be suffering a bit of “Bloggers’ Block” as of late.  I had a very politically charged opinion piece mostly written up after recently seeing several political Facebook posts that raised my hackles a bit, but my computer ate it in a very weird way that I think was Karma, so I’m convinced that it just wasn’t meant to be.  I don’t like to post much political/religious fare on my Facebook because I have Facebook friends of all religions and political stripes and I do not feel that that is the proper forum for such rants.  When I feel the occasional need to rant, I prefer to do it here where people who don’t wish to see it can simply ignore it.

My Linux upgrade saga continues.  I would say I’m about 90 percent there at this point.  I got my window-manager problem fixed.  I ended up switching to GDM from Mint’s LightDM, then found this:  http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-906990.html.  Ended up only having to edit /usr/share/xsessions/Afterstep.desktop and change the “Type” parameter to “Application” and pound (comment) out the “NoDisplay=true” parameter line, then restarting X.

I also got my browser (Firefox 10) set up and safely working under a separate user (see my previous article post on this subject). This is something I highly recommend to all Linux/Unix users since it’s not hard to do and greatly adds to your computer’s security, since the browser and any malicious code launched through it runs as a user with very weak privileges and thus can be prevented from altering, or even seeing other programs and data on your computer.  I do not know if this is feasible on Windows, but I do recommend working in Windows (if you insist) as a separate (non-Administrator) user.

Got my fonts working on Tk/a2x by adding all the files from my old /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/ dir.  Then I added symlinks to atm3270.ttf, atmfull.ttf, and lucon.ttf to /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/.  This makes them visible to ghostscript and Tk.  To get them visible in X/xfontsel, I looked in /var/log/Xorg.0.log, which told me it looked by default for fonts in various X-ish places and “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType/”. There was nothing in there but empty fonts.dir, fonts.scale, fonts.alias, and encodings.dir.  So, I ended up renaming that directory and symlinking TrueType instead to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont.  That’s where all my cool truetype fonts live along with, the requisite (for X) apparently, the fonts.dir and friends files.  This seemed to work for a while, but has since stopped working.  I’ve yet to figure out why.

Another old dockapp program that no longer worked was “wmpower“, which stops working somewhere after kernel 2.6.35 or something like that.  Problem is that it has the path to the kernel’s power management stuff hard-coded to “/proc/acpi/info”.  In newer kernels it’s now “/proc/acpi/wakeup”.  All I had to do was download the latest wmpower source (v. 0.4.3) and modify /src/power_management/acpi/libacpi.c, line 81 as follows (diff/patch):

and follow the instructions to build (./configure; make; make install) and now it works like a champ!

Anyway, this is what led me to a solition:  http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/no-acpi-support-in-kernel-890644/.
  Love, Tears & Blood

Misc. Other Stuff:

Justice Ginsburg: ‘I Would Not Look to the U.S. Constitution’
me:It is really sad that we apparently have appointed a justice to our highest court and who is sworn to “protect and defend”, and in the case of a justice, to interpret our constitution who feels this way about it.

Weekend project: Zap Your Coworkers’ Minds with Multi-Pointer X!
me:I keep meaning to try this!
 
 

My Linux upgrade has also stalled since I have not been able to add a windowmanager to the lighdm login menu – grrrrrrrrrr¡¡¡¡¡¡¡11¡1111. Unfortunately googling hasn’t helped much. I found what looked like the answer and created the 2 files it said and still, no joy. I used to wrestle with such things late into the night until I beat it into submission, but lately I have just lost interest in computer-geeky stuff like that.

We had over 5″ of rain in a 24-hour period this week. I shot this the first sunny day afterwards while walking. I did not expect much but ended up liking this photo, I hope you do too. <<<<<< Took this while out with a friend in Fort Worth Sat. Night. We found it amusing to see a place called the “Revolver Taco Lounge” located here and four collage-age looking women appearing to be studying while imbibing what looks like a bottle of strong liquor.

More Desolation:

“The Obamanation Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA“ by Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars.com, Jan. 26, 2012. me:Meet “ACTA”, this IS worse than “SOPA”! I had heard about this disaster lurking around in the background and didn’t worry too much about it at the time because I understood it was a TREETY and that it probably wouldn’t make it through with the two-thirds majority approval required even in Harry Reid’s Senate, but, much to my surprise, the Obamanation has now tried to unilaterally and UNCONSTITUTIONALLY “sign” it into law. I don’t know why ANYTHING surprises me anymore? The “Victory” over SOPA seemed a bit too quick and easy to me but now I’m convinced that that was the “bait” and now this is the “switch”. The Obamanation Orders Catholics to Act Against Their Faith; Bishops Call it ‘Unconscionable’ my thoughts: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer [you] in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of [your] hand, O king, But if not, be it known unto [you] O king, that we will NOT serve [your] gods, nor worship the golden image which [you have] set up.” – Daniel, 3, 16-18 (KJV).

In Lighter News:

Watch 30 giant hornets take out 30,000 honey bees (io9.com)“Warrant needed for GPS tracking, high court says“ by Jesse J. Holland and Pete Yost, Associated Press, Jan. 23, 2012. me:Hey, they got one right, score one for Liberty! “7-year-old’s heart-melting letter to Kyle Williams“ me:Now that’s a good news story! Some time-saving tips every Linux user should know Word for the Day: Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – noun: a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers. Quote of the Day: “Note to the younger generation: Always be nice to nerds! One day, you’ll be working for them! ” – Abel Gonzalez – friend.  - me:Yea Bro!

]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/mixed-bag/feed/ 0 wildstar84 Drinkin' Studin' & Mexican Food The Rain's Receding! http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-are-not-computers/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-are-not-computers/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:05:31 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=874 ]]> “Leaf” commercial: “What if Everything ran on gas?” ©2012 – Nissan      Is it just me or have car companies and their commercials totally lost their way?  A new Ford commercial the other day boasted that their car was “like driving a computer”.  Another from Cadallac starring Kate Walsh a while back listed a “40 gig hard drive” as one of it’s top selling bullet-points.  Another commercial for Nissan (video below), which I happen to love for the humor, is one that depicts a world where everything runs on gasoline EXCEPT their car.  The poor, silent car it is promoting is called a “Leaf”.  What kind of name for a car is that – a “LEAF”?!  Are there no “real men” left buying cars these days?  I prefer more inspiring names for cars, names with personality that convey power, strength, speed, or freedom such as “Marauder”, “Charger”, “Mustang”, “Fury”, “Fleetwood”, and “Grand Prix”.  Even the soul-less names typical of many German cars, like “320i” are better than that!  These are CARS we’re discussing, NOT toasters!  Cars have personality, cars make noise, cars go places, cars get dirty, cars (used to) make smoke and fumes, cars can help the owner present a particular image.  I must be a relic, but I don’t ever want to own a car that I have to “plug in”.  Heck, I’d have it plugged in and get in, “turn it on”, and drive off until it pulled the plug out with me either coming to a rolling halt in front of my neighbor’s house to see him snicker at me as he fetched his morning paper, or just keep going with a very long cord-tail twisting around behind me until someone turned and drove over it yanking me to a sudden halt – the automotive version of having your shoelace stepped on!  

      I don’t understand what’s so “green” about electric cars – you STILL have to BURN something and produce just as much smoke and pollution (more if coal) SOMEWHERE ELSE, since the anti-nukesters will never allow us to build the plethora of nuclear plants needed to provide enough cheap and clean electricity necessary to truly make electric cars “greener” and effective for widespread use!

me standing next to a truly beautiful and “green” car (that’s not mine)¡ :/      I want a car that I can “START” and “turn over”, NOT one that I have to “turn on”!  I want an “ENGINE”, not a “motor”, that will roar to life when I twist a real metal KEY (not press a reboot button) and where I can feel that herd of horses under the hood chomping at the bit to muscle me onto the open freeway on one of our antiquated 60′ long right-angle freeway acceleration ramps and then cruse at the legal speed of 70mph up hills with power to pass the inevitable junk-wagon that always seems to be tooling along in front of you just as the road is about to narrow to a single lane!  I like a car to be SIMPLE, the LESS ELECTRONICS, the less to go wrong, the BETTER!  I miss the time when a high school dropout could fix your car, or you could at least hold it together with bailing wire until you could get to the mechanic, rather than the whole thing just instantly turning into a 1-ton boat anchor without warning because some “oxygen-sensor” or the “main computer” failed.  On my dad’s old car, the A/C compressor went out on the way home from a long beach trip.  He simply cut the belt off and we drove home without A/C and power steering.  Today, you would be stuck on the side of the road.  I wander now if my car’s ever going to “crash” suddenly on the highway with an invisible “blue screen of death” and just seize up right there in traffic?!  When I’m looking at a car, I don’t care about the size of it’s “hard drive”, I care about the size of it’s engine, it’s leg room, and it’s trunk size and it’s gas tank!  Am I old-fashioned or what?  The answer must be yes, because I even sorely miss those little triangle-shaped windows almost all cars USED to have.  Some of the older ones used to even have them in the BACK too (like this one)!  I even miss hood ornaments too and I love the swan that gracefully adorns this hood.

]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-are-not-computers/feed/ 0 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/back-to-peaceful-quiet-normal/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/back-to-peaceful-quiet-normal/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:30:23 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=862 ]]> Finally, a quiet week this week, Kid’s back off to college, better-half is back at the office, and I’m back at work by myself here at the ranch! I just finished eating the last homemade holiday cookie here as I type. (Thank you Honey for the awesome home-baked cookies!) I’m proud of the fact that I was involved in the largest internet protest ever this week by taking this blog down to protest the SOPA and Protect IP bills grinding their way through Congress as most bills do, sort of like making really cheap sausage. WordPress (this blog’s host site) was down for the day (Wednesday), but it was left to each individual blogger whether or not to take down their blogs. If you are not familiar with this pending legislation, you should be because it threatens the open frontier of free-expression that is the internet, the last such frontier left in the world. Here’s a good site, including a video, that explains this in more detail. It is really sad that so many of our Congress critters are bought and paid for by Big Hollywood, and that while we condemn censorship in China and elsewhere, we are so ready to practice it ourselves. It looks like the protest is starting to have some effect, several in Congress, and even the “Obamanation” appear to be backing away from it, but still, we’re up against a LOT of campaign $$$$$. “I’m Just a [Bad] Bill” (Schoolhouse Rock)

Great video of “Dark Side Of The Moon” by Pink Floyd – Thanks, LDC for sharing!

My roll of 35mm b&w film arrived this week and is now loaded in my camera ready for some serious b&w street photography, but I haven’t had a chance to do any yet, hoping to Saturday! This is the first time I’ve ever had any b&w film, having been doing my b&w of late using digital. I had hoped to buy some at the store, but was unable to find any, so, off to Amazon.com I went & got this 36exp. 400iso. b&w film.

I got the latest Linux installed on my lappy, but I haven’t touched it during the workweek because I’ve been too busy with my photos and enjoying the beautiful warm weather we’ve been having lately, to want to work on it in the evenings. besides, my current ancient Linux installation is working just fine, of course!

I did join a new photography hosting site this week: “Camera Enthusiast – (www.camera-enthusiast.com)”. It is mostly a Pentaxian-oriented site (I’m a proud Pentaxian myself), but is open to photographers of all gear. They are currently allowing free, unlimited photo space for members to create and display their work in albums! So far, it seems like a pretty cool site. I’ll continue to post work on my Flickr account, but will also contribute here too. On Flickr, my work is displayed in a single “stream” from most recent to oldest, but since it’s only a freetard account (I’m cheap, lol), it only shows my 200 most recent photos, which has been reasonable, but I’ve been shooting a lot lately, so now stuff that’s less than a year old is dropping off. Either I’m becoming busier, liking more of my shots, or else becoming more vain, lol! With this site, your work is automatically broken up into albums. There are also discussion threads and the members seem to be mostly serious photographers, both amateurs and pros. Still a lot of exploring to do.! While my week was peacefully boring and quiet, my Stack-o-Stuff has filled up nicely this week, please see below:

“Put Another Log on the Fire“, by Tompall Glaser Found this song, from childhood after it came up in conversation as my wife was adding a log to the fireplace the other night. WARNING:  If you’re a feminist, you won’t like it, but for rednecks & the rest of us, it’s a real HOOT, so enjoy!

This Week’s Stack of Stuff:

Interesting “Green?” cubicle walls! – Courtesy(c) MTV Geek

Excellent WGET Tutorial Good list of Linux/Unix networking commands Ten Useful Terminal Commands for Linux/Unix users Texas: Top State Senator Says Red Light Cameras About Money – me:Amazing when pols. openly admit what the rest of us serfs knew all along! Quote of the Day – (Cuttin’ thru the BS): “There are several common ingredients in how the left enlarges its control over our lives. The first is the selection of some aspect of reality — global warming, carbon footprints, population growth, inequality, diversity, for example. The second element involves designating the selected aspect of reality as a crisis. The third step is to explain that the only way to avoid Armageddon is by reducing everyone’s freedom and by giving more centralized power and control to those who understand the magnitude of the crisis. The rest of us are told that our freedoms are a luxury we simply can no longer afford.” - “Special Report Now Playing: The Sustainability Con“, By Ron Ross, American Spectator, Jan 12, 2012.

]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/back-to-peaceful-quiet-normal/feed/ 0 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/the-holidays-are-over-the-nest-is-empty-again/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/the-holidays-are-over-the-nest-is-empty-again/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:45:31 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=852 ]]>       The holidays are now officially over, sigh. My daughter’s gone back off to college and I began taking down the Christmas lights outside an hour after she left (She did not want any of the Christmas decorations removed while she was here). It’s also when I clean out the gutters. This is the perfect time to do it because when I put up the lights in November, the leaves are usually still on the trees and the gutters are mostly clean, but by January, all the leaves have completely fallen and are filling the gutters. I decided this year to only take down half of them today and the other half the next time we get a weekend with decent weather. I left up the ones that I can see from the den windows!

      This was a rare beautiful January weekend weather-wise and perfect for getting out and doing some more b&w photography! I am currently intrigued with b&w and have been shooting around town and nearby countryside capturing some good rural and street scenes. I also got out and jogged and, as I mentioned earlier, spent a couple of hours taking down lights and cleaning the gutters.

      I got my calendar back this week too. I had submitted the twelve pictures I posted recently under “My Year in Photography” to Walgreen’s to make a 2012 calendar. They did an awesome job on it too! The only problem is that they apparently can’t make duplicates after you submit it in-store. They said to re-submit it online, which will save it!

      I ordered myself a roll of b&w film to try out in my ME-Super this week after not finding in stores. I’m interested in trying out b&w via film. Can’t wait!

      I also began the arduous process of installing a new Linux version on the extra space on my new hard drive, Linux Mint v12. So far, I’ve got it installed and my browser extensions and two custom fonts installed. I’ve installed some of my software and copied my /home directory over and got my Tk software, namely the E editor and JFM3 filemanager up and running happily. Suspend & hibernate are working, I still have a titanic amount of stuff to do, since I’ve customized and tweaked just about EVERYTHING on my existing system, including rebuilding the kernel to remove all the bloat! I’ve only spent some time in the evenings and late at night since it’s been too nice to not be outside during the day. The thing that’s got me stumped at the moment is how to add my Afterstep window-manager to the login session manager. It uses one that I’m not familiar with “lightdm” or something “gdm”-ish which I’ve never set up before. Anyone have any ideas? – please comment!!

      I did have one minor tech triumph today just before my daughter left. She was needing a M$-Word doc converted to PDF and could NOT do it on Windows, even in OpenOffice (she had ABANDONED Linux just before heading off to college). I was able to open it in Libreoffice and print it to a file (pdf) for her and send her on her merry way! She also introduced me to a new word today – “Sorastitute” – n: College-aged girl who is a member of a sorority who’s name contains Greek letters, lol!
“Lunar Eye” – Had fun making this one using a huge cedar bush & fiddling with the contrast!

Street photography on the Square in town.

“Old Rugged Cross” on Pearson Ranch.

Lovely old farm house at Pearson & White Settlement.

Beautiful pond not far from me.

Today’s News You can Use!

Linux Kernel 3.2 Officially Lands in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS!

Secret and Hidden Codes for Android

10 Programming Languages That Could Shake Up IT

Email in your eye? Next-generation video screen glasses could lay messages or GPS over your field of vision

“Why My Liberal Neighbors Aren’t Speaking To Me Anymore“

Girl Scout, 14, Calls For Cookie Boycott Over “Radical Sodomite Agenda”
]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/the-holidays-are-over-the-nest-is-empty-again/feed/ 0 wildstar84 Lunar Eye Old Rugged Cross Farm House http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/how-to-clone-a-dying-hard-disk/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/how-to-clone-a-dying-hard-disk/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:00:14 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=845 ]]>       This has been a hectic week.  Lot’s of stuff seems to want to go out at the beginning of the year.  First, my clothes-dryer element burned out, after lasting only six months, then a hot water element, that lasted a little over a year, and finally, my computer’s hard drive appears to be on it’s last leg.  Fortunately the hot water element is under a six year warranty, so I was able to call and get an auth. no. from Whirlpool and toddle down to Lowe’s and get a shiny new one freeeeeeee!  The fun part was spending my Friday night draining the heater with a Shopvac® & vacuuming out all the hard well-water deposits and replacing the (bottom) element.  We still had hot water, but just not very much.  I suspect the element failed awhile back, but did not become noticeable until the water became really cold due to Winter.

Cloning my existing hard drive that has both Windows-XP and Linux partitions:

     The hard drive did not completely die, but rather my system had crashed twice within a week resulting in fsck reporting numerous errors, such as lost inodes, chains, and duplicate references even though I shut down my system properly and the file-system (ext3) is journaled.  This tells me the hard drive is starting to go bad, so I did a quick routine backup of recent stuff and purchased a new, larger one right away and cloned it onto the new one (I had figured out how and done it once before a while back).  Fortunately with Linux this is duck-soup simple to do!  I didn’t hesitate to do this, since for one thing, the “dying” drive could become unusable at any time; and, I had been secretly wanting a new, bigger hard drive for Christmas, but had not gotten myself one then, after blowing my wad on a totally awesome new Tamron 90mm macro lens for my cameras (see what it can do)!

     All I needed to do was boot up with a Linux live-CD (so that the existing drive is NOT mounted), connect my new SATA hard-drive up via a hodge-podge cable kit to the USB port and run 2 Linux commands (shown below).  The only requirement is that the new drive be as big or bigger than the drive to be cloned.

WARNING: MAKE *CERTAIN* YOUR EXISTING DRIVE DEVICE-ID IS THE *FIRST* ARGUMENT TO ddrescue() ELSE YOU WILL WIPE YOUR EXISTING DRIVE!  He does NOT ask you if you are SURE!!!!!

     The 2 commands (run as sudo/root in a terminal) are:  (Don’t let the terminal scare you & please don’t ask me for a GUI interface!)

cfdisk -z /dev/<your-NEW-disk-device>            #This makes sure an empty partition table exists, I believe.
ddrescue -v /dev/<your-OLD-disk-device> <your-NEW-disk-device>            #This clones your disk.

     The second command will take awhile, so make sure your computer is on reliable A/C power (no thunderstorms nearby), and be ready to go off and do something non-computer geek-ish – I replaced my hot water heater element, lol.  For cloning a/b 230 gig of data, the second command took me about 2 hours.

     I then created logical ext4 partitions in the extra space in preparation for a fresh Linux upgrade install (when I have time), since I will want my current, WORKING, uber-customized Linux install to exist concurrently with the new install for a while until I get everything copied over and customized into a usable state!  My plan is to eventually remove the old partitions and resize the new ones to include the space now occupied by the current ones, but, no hurry there because I have plenty of space for all of them.

     My one concern was how badly Windows-XP, on the first partition, would squawk thinking it was now on a different computer, which last time required me to “re-register” it online with Micro$oft using the sixteen-digit hex product code on the sticker underneath my computer.  This time, Windows booted up without a hitch, yay, which allowed me to fix the one hiccup that did occur – my system clock (local time) on the Linux side was an hour off, but I remember from past experience that booting Windows once will rectify this and it did!

     I’m now enjoying a new, faster, bigger, quieter hard disk – ymmv!
]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/how-to-clone-a-dying-hard-disk/feed/ 0 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/2011-my-year-in-photography/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/2011-my-year-in-photography/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:26:22 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=838 ]]>      I first got interested in learning about photography back in college when I received a 35mm film SLR (Pentax ME-Super) as a Christmas gift, but, over the years had gradually gotten to where I was only taking pictures at Christmas, birthdays, and vacations. I had also drifted away into P&S cameras and our first couple of digital cameras were P&S. I got my first digital SLR camera (a Pentax K-x) Christmas of last year and have fallen back in love with photography. I even stunned myself with the fact that I had taken over 6000 pictures in the last year with my new toy. There’s just so many things to experiment with and ways to capture images. I’ve thrown away a lot, but kept most. I’ve found that digital is a much easier and quicker way to actually learn and practice photography. Mistakes are easier to identify and correct due to immediate feedback and relative ease of trying different settings, exposures, and framing, as well as the ability to alter the virtual film speed to the conditions.

     I have seen many other people out using fancy DLSR cameras and I can’t help but notice how they have their exposure mode wheel set and that most have them set in “Auto” or “Green” (P&S) mode. Experience has shown me that if you shoot in “Auto” mode, which is handy for occasions where you have to be prepared to shoot suddenly, your pictures will be pretty much the same as what you can capture with a much smaller, more convenient, and less expensive P&S camera. I don’t see a lot of point to purchasing a DSLR camera and lenses to shoot P&S. I find myself manually adjusting the exposure compensation and the other parameters in order to do more challenging captures and to get better results. I purchased my DSLR with the intent to further master and practice the art of photography with the skills I learned with my manual film camera and adopting them to the digital world, which opens up additional parameters to control and all sorts of additional possibilities for photographic expression. This has made photography fun and challenging for me again!

     After seeing a couple of these “Year in Photography” posts recently, I’ve decided to do one myself. I’ve compiled a small album here with a picture from each month of the year that I feel best represents my first year in digital photography. I’ve learned a lot during the last twelve months and (hope) that my photography skills have improved somewhat during that time, and I’ve had a lot of fun in the process! It has also been fun for me to go back and look at what I’ve done and at some of the earlier ones and thinking “why did I do that like that?” or “I would definitely change such and such if I were shooting that today!”! Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you and I hope you enjoy the visual part of the tour below! If you are interested in these and more of my photographs, please visit my Flickr site at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53919821@N03/. January February March
Created w/toy solder & handkerchief
Aggie Bonfire Memorial
Redbuds, an early attempt at macro. April May June
Denton Night Scene
“Humming Bug” (Sphynx Moth)
Gathering Storm July August September
Along came a spider!
A Texas Sunrise
 
“Cool Reflection”
“As-was”, NO editing / post-processing! October November December
Autumn Flowers
Autumn Colors
Fibre Optics
]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/2011-my-year-in-photography/feed/ 0 wildstar84 Guarding Freedom In Space Aggie Bonfire Memorial Redbuds Denton Nightlife Humming Bug? Gathering Storm Along came a spider Texas Sunrise Unedited - Cool reflection! Autumn blooms Autumn color II Fibre Optics http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/trying-my-hand-at-bw-photography/ http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/trying-my-hand-at-bw-photography/#comments Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:07:49 +0000 wildstar84 http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/?p=832 ]]> With the holidays over and it now being the “dead of winter” around here I’ve decided this week to start practicing some black and white photography. There’s less color around in Winter than any other time of the year and I’ve discovered that often, things that look rather mundane photographed in color can become vivid and interesting in b&w (and of course the reverse is also true). Another thing I’ve discovered is that good b&w photography involves more than just stripping out the color and converting it to shades of gray. It involves altering other parameters, namely contrast and sharpness and requires some trial and error. I would like to get some b&w film, but haven’t found any in the local stores, so for now I’ll practice with digital. I also stumbled upon this blog post last week which inspired me with her many beautiful street photographs. Please check out her blog (“Klara’s Street“) and her inspiring photography post here!:

http://klarayoon.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/my-year-in-street-photography/

Anyway, we had absolutely beautiful weather here Saturday, so I just went to town and did a shoot and then later went walking out on the trails with my wife and shot some more. Here are a few of the results of my first real stab at this:
(no post-processing as usual) – (See my Flickr page for larger images of these, and more photos). In unrelated news, I rang in the new year with my wife at home as usual this year while watching the ball drop in Times Square on TV. We almost never go anywhere on New Year’s Eve. Then we shot off some fireworks in the front yard and, because of a weird tradition that my wife has, we tossed a football back and forth a few times & went to bed lol!

I had already done enough partyin’ the night before with a bunch of friends, most of whom like me wanted to spend a quiet New Years’ Eve with our families.

Today’s humor:
This video entitled:  ”The Best Fishing Bloopers Ever”  >>>>>
Happy New Year 2012, everyone!
]]> http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/trying-my-hand-at-bw-photography/feed/ 0 wildstar84 Bridge in 2nd year of building :/ Out for a country drive... Cool old horse barns