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A.I.G. Sues US for $306 Million, so what?

I’m not an especially political person. I exersice my right to vote here in the US and I stay current with what is happening but I generally try to avoid political discussion. This story on the NYTimes though struck me so I thought I’d pass along my quick thoughts…

Take a look at this story, and then come back: A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments

Basically, to me it’s all ‘Blah Blah Blah’. I’m not a tax person and, who knows, maybe they are ‘owed’ money. I’m not going to discuss that end of things. I think it’s ridiculous for them to sue the government with the governments money, but that is neither here nor there.… Click here to read more!

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Grow Your Own, Season 2

Spring is begining to come upon us here in the northeast of America. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen some warm temps, climbing into the 60s; We have also seen about a foot of snow in the past 10 days or so. Here in New England, it takes spring a few weeks to really get a foot hold. As it approaches however my mind is increasingly focused on developing (growing, if you will), last years vegetable experiment.

Last year I took a small plot of land, only 4′ by 8′ and grew a few vegetables. It was small, it was simple and it took almost no time at all.… Click here to read more!

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I like 35mm film, and I’m not ashamed.

If you look around the internet you will find what almost appears to be a bit of a film renaissance. People all over the internet are adding film back into their photography. It seems people are not abandoning digital for film, they are simply adding film to how they work. While the end result between digital and film are the same, pictures, they both have various strengths and weaknesses that can and should be exploited.

Digital is really great at a lot of things and I shoot 75% of my work on my Nikon D300. You can make thousands of tweaks to the camera, change the ISO speed at any time and can see what your shots look like right now.… Click here to read more!

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Into the Sky… Again!

I recently had a chance to go for another flight in the Cessna 180. The weather around here has been very cold lately so there were some concerns that the plane would not be willing to come to life. Dave, the pilot and owner, brought with him a pre-heater for the plane though so after ten or fifteen minutes of warming when we pulled it out of the hanger it started up almost immediately.

Once we got things moving we began taxiing out to the runway at Hampton Airfield (7B3). The whole place is a sheet of ice from the hanger to the runway.… Click here to read more!

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Fuji Superia 400 Film Review

When I first bought my Nikon FE I canvased a few people I know that have or do shoot film to find out what they recommend for a general use film. Something that I could use for whatever might come my way. Everyone said to look for a 400 speed film and a number of them pointed me squarely at this Fuji film. It’s a standard print film that can be handled and processed most anywhere. I bought a few 36 exposure rolls and went to town, so to speak.

I am pretty impressed with this film. It does have a healthy amount of grain to it, though it’s not distracting, and it does very well with shadow detail.… Click here to read more!

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pfSense and the ALIX.2D2

In a recent post I detailed my current saga of server trouble. This time around I was having router trouble causing this website, and others, to fall offline. Not that much fun…

When life hands you lemons though, one needs to try to make lemonade. Since I needed to replace hardware I wanted to make sure I put in place some hardware I could trust to last another 5 years and hardware that would sip power… not guzzle it down like the now dead antique desktop tower computer had. My needs are pretty low performance-wise and I don’t need to have a super high performance setup.… Click here to read more!

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Servers, You Gotta Love them…

My home network is more complicated then most. I host some web sites, my email servers, and various other ancillary services that the average person doesn’t need, or want to worry about. As an IT person though it behooves me to have a test bed to try out new things, without the risk of losing company data.

In recent years I have been using IPCop as the gateway between my home network and the outside world. Generally speaking, it’s worked just great. I rarely had to reboot it and the web interface was usable, if slow. The only draw back for me is that they don’t seem to favor low power machines.… Click here to read more!

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Film, and why I like it.

I’ve been shooting a lot of film as of late. Nothing fancy, just standard 35mm film. I have not, nor do I plan to stop shooting digital it’s just that I’ve started shooting film as well. To be honest I don’t even remember why I started shooting film, it just happened one day. I guess it was around the same time Nikon released the D3 and the D700, digital cameras with an image sensor that is the same size as a frame of 35mm film. I got to thinking about the cost of the new digital cameras, $5,000 and $3,000 respectively and I wandered around the internet looking for the cost of color film and Nikon film SLRs that could use the lenses I already own.… Click here to read more!

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Norco DS-1220, Linux, and Green Hard Drives…

I’ve had my Norco DS-1220 for six or seven months now and have some time to adjust to it and really feel out it’s performance. When I first setup the system (transitioning from the Thecus), I had a 2TB RAID 5 array built with 5 500GB Western Digital Caviars. When the array was at around 95% capacity I decided to add more storage and began looking for the most cost effective way to do that. I always use generic 3.5″ drives and I usually pay as close to $100 each for them as possible. Typically when the time comes for me to add storage it makes sense to double my capacity and Murhpy’s law always seems to work out that drives twice as large as the one I am replacing are at about $100 each.… Click here to read more!

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Into the Sky

On November the 3rd I took my first flight in a small aircraft. Specifically it was in a Cessna 180 tail-dragger from the mid 1950s in beautiful condition with new upholstery and a traditional avionics setup with steam gagues and dials.

The day was overcast and cool but with very little wind and a cloud ceiling of about 3000 feet. When I woke up I looked outside I was worried the flight would be canceled but was quickly set at ease after a call to my friend Chris. With the clouds as high as they were they didn’t pose a problem at all and the forecast didn’t show any rain so we were still all set to go.… Click here to read more!