That Tim Guy

I recently took a half-day trip to Magic Wings in S. Deerfield, MA with the whole family. I could probably have easily spent all day photographing all of the different butterflies and flora there. Unfortunately they do not allow any sort of camera pods into the facility and while I understand why (it’s pretty crowded) it just further emphasized that I have unsteady hands. Oh well! I still manage some great pictures and this is what I have so far. All of these were shot using my 35mm Macro lens.

Some are good, some are great, some are meh. I still have a few more…but I’m not sure if they are worthy of posting.

DIY: Replacing the Battery in your Smart Key

Car: 2008 Mazda MX-5 (Last year that this style key was used)

1. Remove the emergency key from the key card.
2. Open the rubber battery door. On the left side (opposite side of emergency key) there is a thin piece of rubber that wraps around the bottom side profile corner. On the long side there is a small opening about 3/4″ from the bottom. In this opening, the rubber piece can be pried away from the key card. Something with a small tip should be used, such as a paperclip end to lift the rubber away. (Be careful not to damage the key card)
3. Once the battery door is open, shake or tap the key card gently to loose the battery. It will fall out.
4. Replace with a new battery by sliding it positive (+) side up into the card. Battery is a 3V CR2025.
5. Close the rubber battery door and push the side portion back into the card. Voila!

The hardest part is removing that little rubber strip that is the battery door. The pictures should be self-explanatory.

This DIY was written for Miata.net in this thread.

I was near “The Elm City” this past weekend visiting some friends and ventured in to a spot that I’ve known about that always has some fresh burnerz. Every time I go I am truly amazed at the work. This is an excellent spot for automotive photography as well. When I was in college I worked with one of the artists known as REO. The rest of Hi-Crew does amazing work and it always leaves me in awe. They are true masters of rattle can art.

Added: 2/17/2010: A quick google search brought me over to this YouTube Channel with a bunch of work done by Hi-Crew.

I took another adventure with Mike and managed to get a couple of shots I liked. Our original plan was to attempt find and photograph a bald eagle. While we did find one, courtesy his wife (Amy), and managed to photograph it….it only ended up being about 10 pixels or so after zooming in to about 400% on the photo.  So needless to say, I won’t post that picture! A lot of my other pictures ended up looking like snapshots that day or didn’t do anything for me….and won’t make it to the world wide internet. Here are a few that I deemed worth enough.  I think my personal favorite is “Death of a Snowman.”

There are also some shots of a tobacco barn that Mike was very eager to shoot. I would like to return again and set up some proper shots of the interior. I think by this point in the day the cold was finally settling in!

Drove past this today and I had to grab a picture of my filthy car  next to it. There were some amazing burners on these walls. Hopefully more pictures to follow at a later date!

As I was rummaging around my parent’s basement I found an old dark leather case. I had no idea what was in this case. The clip was broken, the leather is dry, there was about 20 layers of dust on it, and a few cobwebs. I took a deep breath and blew off the dust and promptly coughed after inhaling the dust. I brought it over into the light and opened it up…it looked like there was another case inside of this one. This didn’t make any sense. Upon closer examination I found that there was one small label on it that said “KODAK.” I thought to myself….hrm…this is not the Kodak logo I am familiar with, but perhaps its an old camera?

Well, my guess was right. It took me a solid 15 minutes to figure out all of its workings and how to open it without breaking it, but it is a camera. “No. 1A Autographic KODAK JR.” The last patent date I saw on the inside of the film cover was 1917. From what I could tell, all of the mechanical operations of this camera still seemed to be functioning at about 100%. The lens looks a little bit cloudy and I think I can see an old fingerprint on it (I wonder who’s it could be? My Father’s? Grandfather’s?) It says it uses 116 film and after quick research, it doesn’t look like it has been produced in 25 years or so. From some of my other research…it appears that the “Autographic” feature of this camera was the precursor to the time stamp that we are accustomed to seeing on the lower right hand corner of photos. There was a door on the back of the camera. One would open this door and write the date, location, or anything else onto a red piece of paper with a stylus or pencil and then expose it to light for a few seconds and then close the door. This would then add the information to the film negatives in between the frames. Quite a handy way to keep track of what the photos are.

Other than this basic info, I don’t know a whole lot about it…prices of these cameras seem to range on eBay from $35-$100+

The Leonids Meteor Showers occurred during the wee hours of Tuesday morning. I managed to wake myself up at 3:30am  and went try and actually get a photo of a meteor with Mike. It was very difficult to try and catch them. They were shooting for all over the place even though they were supposed to be in the eastern part of the sky. I didn’t think I had caught any until I was looking through the 90+ photos I took and I saw a faint hint of a streak on one of the photos. Well I thank my lucky stars, I actually caught one! Granted, the photo quality is poor and you can barely see it, but I actually got one.

This shot was facing eastward and as you can tell the sun is starting to poke up. I had to verify that the streak wasn’t an airplane, but luckily I had 2 shots aimed in the same part of the sky and the other one did not have an airplane nor the streak, so this leads me to believe it IS a meteor and is falling in the direction we saw most of them fall.

We made a later attempt that night but saw maybe 2-4 meteors and with 4 sets of eyes. More of that night photography will follow.

Last night I packed up my photography equipment after my graduate class into my car and met up with an old friend. After a quick stop at McD’s to enjoy one of my favorite sandwiches we stopped at open field, setup our tripods and began to see what types of shots we could get with a full moon out.  After exhausting the area (and getting frustrated with my inability to manually focus the camera in the dark) we went over to the university’s  campus and walked around taking photos of a sodium-vapor light filled environment. I did manage to get a few photos that I deemed worthy (less than 5% of the photos I took). Have a look.

Carved Charlie tonight with the lady friend. Here he is in all of his Spooky Glory. His eternal soul will live on even though I roasted his seeds for offspring in butter, salt, and garlic. Happy Pumpkin Sacrifice Day.

Installed the Stat Counter plugin today…hopefully that is operating correctly. Everything appears fine in Firefox & Safari. Haven’t tested IE yet. Now I can see how many times my page is loaded.