Month: December 2010

Bike Christmas Tree

On my way back from the doctor’s office this morning I stopped and snapped a photo of this Christmas Tree made entirely out of old bicycles in front of a “Flea Market” store. I think I need to go back and shoot from a slightly different angle so you can read the whole sign reading Christmas Store. And maybe a little later in the day, so that there is a hint of darkness which might make the string of lights more noticeable.

After having the weather the last couple of weeks such that making ice cubes outside was possible at midday, this morning when we left for work it positively balmy at 38° and this evening we took a small drive with the top down…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 914

Red Sky In Morning


Sailor Take Warning

I don’t know if that little ditty is truly accurate, but the Weather Channel is calling for a 40% chance of Light Rain/Ice Early for here tonight.

The sunrise was very pretty this morning with lots of little puffy clouds that cycled from orange to red to pink on the drive in to work. As we got out of the car I noticed this slopping line of solid red to the southeast. If you look up from the right tail light of the red Mustang you might see a dark spot that is the window in my new cubicle.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Panoramic Photos Made Easy

Buy a camera that has the function built in.

Regular Reader Randy (that almost deserves its own acronym, RRR) commented on yesterday’s post wanting to know how I made that panoramic 360° photo of my cubical. Well Randy, I don’t remember, but I’m guessing by the photo’s vintage, circa 2001-02, that it was done using the Olympus D-40Z which had the function built right into the camera. The predecessor to that camera, a Kodak V570, had a mode that did it internally to three successive exposures quite convincingly. Sadly my current Panasonic DMC-TZ3 does have that function.

But I figured that with a little bit of web searching I could come up with a freeware solution. And I did, unfortunately they were either crap or so complex that it would take a rocket scientist to make it work. I found one, AutoStitch, where using their included sample images the demo worked great, but trying to use my images it only knitted two of the 10 photos. So I ended up doing it the old fashioned way, creating one really long blank image and placing each photo in it one on top of the other. Here you go, my new 9′ x 9′ home:

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Moving Monday

I spent most of the day moving everything from my office/cubicle up front into the new digs at the back of the plant. It is kind of an adjustment because I have been in the same room (with various forms of furniture) since starting at ASCO in Aiken in 1989. I searched the ol’ blog here for a 180 degree panoramic photo I took of my work area several years ago, because I was sure I published it here, but can’t seem find it. So I will post it here and promise that tomorrow I will do the same thing for the new home.


Be sure to click the image to get a page with a bigger size, then select Full Size at the bottom of the page to view it in its full glory.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Blue Movies

And I don’t mean the kind of movies those of you who are my age or older are thinking of, I’m talking about them blue ray movies. Last night as the MMC Christmas party was winding down our host brought out his copy of Bullit in blu-ray so we could watch the famous chase scene. As one person put it, “They had to round up an awful lot of vintage cars to film this.” The picture was so bright and crisp you could have sworn it was filmed earlier that day.

Donna and I were so impressed with the picture that we thought maybe we would get one of those new fangled blue movie players for ourselves. You can get them at Walmart for a less than a hundred bucks. Then I started thinking, if we are buying one, why not get one that includes Netflix so I can stop dragging out the laptop to to do the Instant Watch thing. Here is a Panasonic for about $130 at Amazon. It says wireless ready, so you have to spend an additional $80 on an adapter. Nah. A little further digging reveals a Panasonic with the wifi adapter included for $170. Alright, but now I have to do a little research because it mentions it is Wireless N, I’m still chugging along with G and I need to know if they are compatible. Turns out it is. In that research I also find that the player will also allow me access to several internet applications like Twitter, Skype, Picasa and Pandora that are worthless to me. Thanks anyway. What about getting all those torrented TV shows to my TV? Not possible the Panasonic Viera Cast. This morning’s paper had a Target flyer shows a wireless ready Samsung for $110. You of course need a $80 adapter for this one too, but Amazon has the player for the same price as Target and the adapter on sale for $60 making the combo the same price as the previous Panasonic unit. The Samsung player jumps into the lead with this little feature AllShare: Sync up your entire household. A wired or wireless DLNA connection lets you stream your PC audio and video files to your HDTV using your remote. But it is knocked right off the pedestal when internet searching turns up conflicting reports of it’s ability to stream any old file. Sigh.

Right now we are going to stick with what we have. I’m just not ready to spend the money on something that may or may not work, especially since dragging out the laptop and plugging in an HDMI cable a couple times a week is really no big deal, plus this had the potential to develop into a money pit. For one it is $3 a month more to rent Blu-Ray from Netflix. Then the wireless G might not of hacked it streaming HD data, so another $70-80 would be needed for a new Wireless N router. Next the 7 year-old PC would have trouble keeping up serving the media. $2,000 later we would realize that a 32″ LCD wasn’t big enough to really enjoy our new found high definition video and the cheap $200 surround sound system wouldn’t sound good enough…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Road Ends

We went over to the bike/hike trail along I-520 this morning. We wanted to check up on the condition of our three caches there. Plus there were two new caches we wanted to find, along with a couple of dangling DNFs we thought we’d take another shot at.

All three of our caches were AOK, we found the two new caches and DNF’d the two we couldn’t find the first time. It is not always true, but more often than not, if we don’t find it the first time, we won’t find it on return trips.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Double Up

Although these numbers are not too bad, Dr. PCP says with my high blood pressure they would really like to see my HDL be a lot higher, so he says we are going to double the dose of simvastatin from 20mg to 40mg. In four months we’ll check again and see if I improve.

  Chol HDL LDL Trig
Goal <200 >31 <100 30-150
12/06/10 176 41 114 105
05/18/10 151 38 91 109
12/15/08 167 41 92 171
03/21/08 164 37 104 115
12/12/07 175 38 104 165
07/17/07 185 36 117 162
03/05/07 195 39 123 167
09/19/06 167 37 103 135
04/06/06 168 37 106 126
12/08/05 182 35 120 137
07/28/05 177 30 113 169
06/17/05 164 31 85 238
05/06/05 174 27 108 194
01/10/05 176 33 110 167
09/21/04 209 24 131 271

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911