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Sunsets – Week 2

It is very early in the morning, and I have finally finished my last edits and touch-ups of Week 2 of my sunset series taken that Shamona Creek elementary school.

It is been a couple of weeks since the last time I posted, mainly because the weather has been rather dry, and there have been very few clouds wandering the skies.

So without further ado, I offer up Days 8 through 14 of my continued series of sunsets:

Day 08 - 120320 sunset Shamona Creek es 022 efex
Day 08 – 120320 sunset Shamona Creek es 022 efex

What I find very spectacular about this particular photo is I was able to capture the crepuscular rays, which seems to be a theme for this week’s images!

Day 09 - 120409 sunset Shamona Creek es Panoramic 02
Day 09 – 120409 sunset Shamona Creek es Panoramic 02

The panoramic above, is actually a combination of four images that I took very quickly so that I did not have to worry about the cloud movement.

It also offers up a good overview of the location that I have been shooting from for the past two weeks.

Day 10 - 120412 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 03
Day 10 – 120412 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 03

This image captures the sunset fire of the back-lit weeds, growing amidst the cornfield, and also underscores my looking beyond the general sunsets for more elements within my images.

Day 11 - 120417 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 10 efex
Day 11 – 120417 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 10 efex

This is another two shot capture also shows some more crepuscular rays.

Day 12 - 120420 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 02
Day 12 – 120420 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 02

Technically, I should not be including this within my series, only because it was not taken in the same location as the rest of the collection, but it was taken on my way to the hillside where I have been doing my shooting.

The hardest part about this shot, was trying to figure out a way to accentuate the backlit dandelion seed heads, without losing the overall feel due to the brilliance of the setting sun.

Day 12 - 120420 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 06
Day 12 – 120420 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 06

In the shot you can see the newly installed garden planters!

Day 12 - 120420 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 07
Day 12 – 120420 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 07

Again the onslaught of the ever-present dandelion seed heads, which all kids love to pick and blow off the seeds, to the horror of every person that needs to maintain a lawn.

One of these days, I’m going to collect the required amount of dandelions and finally try to make some wine out of them!

Day 13 - 20120501 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 33
Day 13 – 20120501 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 33

There is very definitely turbulence in the air as you look at this image, along with more crepuscular rays.

I also struggled during processing not to overly emphasize the colors that are inherent when dealing with high dynamic range (HDR) images.

Day 14 - 20120512 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 46
Day 14 – 20120512 sunset Shamona Creek es hdr 46

The final image of this week, goes back to the backlit weeds during the early evening sunset.

Every day I continue to look West as dusk approaches to see if it will be another chance to capture more images from the Shamona Creek elementary school hillside that I have spent so much time at during the past couple of months.

I hope you enjoyed my images from Week 2, and you will check back soon to see what I have added for Week 3!
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Moved to a new Hosting Service

As I mentioned in a previous post, “Moving to Windows 7“, I have completed a second major task that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

CrystalTech and fastCGI

2011 Chester County Balloon Fest 098
2011 Chester County Balloon Fest 098

This task has been bittersweet, in the sense that I’ve been with my previous host, CrystalTech, for 10+ years and they have always been very responsive during that time, but ever since I moved to a WordPress environment, I’d been having issues.

By no means, do I mean to slam CrystalTech in any way shape or form.

The hosting service has done me well for well over a decade, and I have set up many of my clients with them during this time.

My issue with their hosting at this stage the game is purely technical.

CrystalTech’s main mission is to provide Microsoft based Hosting services, which was great for me during my early days of HTML, FrontPage and DotNetNuke adventures, but as I move to WordPress, it became apparent that their Linux/Unix emulation services left a little to be desired.

Again, I do not blame CrystalTech directly because they are offering WordPress in an emulation mode in a Microsoft environment.

Where I see the major issue in this, is the reliance on the little piece of software called fastCGI.

Since I did not have direct access to the error logs, I can only make this inference based on the errors that were coming up in my browser screen, and they seem to indicate more times than not, that fastCGI was the culprit, and I surely do not want to offend anybody that has not had any issues at all.

Again, during my time with CrystalTech, I was never aware of any major outage, and the tech support staff was readily available during instant messaging session, and were always courteous, and I would recommend them for someone wishing to host a pure Microsoft environment.

Inmotionhosting.com

As mentioned previously, I have been investigating a new hosting service for some time, and during some research for new client of mine, I discovered Inmotionhosting.com.

After setting up a new domain registration and hosting requirements for my new client, Filec Services, LLC, I got my first taste of what it was like to be in a purely Linux/Unix environment.

I was first struck by the speed in which I was able to install a brand-new installation of WordPress, and from there, the installation of my various required plug-ins seem to take seconds to install compared to that of my previous hosting service.

When it became time to actually add content, I could just add the information as needed and my WordPress installation just seem to flow with each new page.

Based on this initial experience, I prepared my old site for the migration to Inmotionhosting.com.

Again after doing numerous backups, of both my content and my database, and reviewing as much information on the topic as possible, I made the import of my old website into my new hosting environment, and was extremely pleased to see that nearly everything transferred without any issue whatsoever!

Once in place, I started to tinker around and was still greeted with the new speed that I had just gained for my web site!

In reading further of SEO, Google has announced that website response times are now linked to your ranking, so hopefully I can get my site further up the scale when potential clients are searching for my services!

In the meantime, please take a look at my various posts and pages and see if you do not also agree that the site seems faster than it was a few days ago.

Update

I still find it amazing, how many little bits and pieces need to be reconnected when one moves to a new host, especially after 10+ years!

In reviewing my Google Webmaster Tools account, it seems to indicate that prior to my move to my new host, my page load times were nearly 20 seconds!

It will be interesting to see how those load times will change during the course of the next several months, but already I know, or I should say, that they ‘feel’ a lot faster!

– Andrew
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Announcements Personal

Our Little Artist

20120525 MAS art work
20120525 MAS art work

One of the great things about kids, is that they can surprise you at almost any moment.

This little gem was drawn by Madison, as she waited for me to wake up on the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend.

While she was drawing, she was using her Apple iTouch to take pictures of her progress, and then send them to her mother using iChat.

Needless to say, when I woke up I was a little blown away by my budding little artist!

Update

5/30/2012 – When Madison got home yesterday, she presented us with a permission slip that suggested that another piece of her artwork had been selected for possible publication! We have yet to see this creation, and are very excited about the possibility of seeing her work in published form! Stay tuned for further details!

– A very proud Dad
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Moving to Windows 7

110813 Hersey Park 052
The Roller Coast of Upgrading

I have finally done two things for my computer and online environment that I’ve been contemplating for a very long time: Upgrading to Windows 7 and Moving to a new Web Hosting service. (Moving to a new host will be described in another post.)

When Microsoft Vista came out, there were a great many reports and issues involved with this transitional operating system, and many of those did not like what they seem trapped with when they bought their new machines, and many corporations refused to move to Vista.

Even with time, service packs and patches, Vista never seem to be ready for prime time, so when Windows 7 came out in October of 2009, many people were even more anxious about this new operating system. Would this new operating system be a similar public relations disaster?

As more and more people used and reviewed Windows 7, it became clear, the Microsoft had learned from their earlier mistakes.

Personally, I had said to myself many a times, that I was going to wait till I got a new computer before I made the switch to Windows 7 on my primary machines, but that thinking got squashed when Adobe announced that Lightroom 4 would only run in Windows 7.

To my knowledge, this was the first mainstream application that required the use of Windows 7, and since I rely heavily on Lightroom, I had to reevaluate my thinking and my pocketbook.

So after freeing up some time and getting all business related activity done, I set about the task of backing up my system and beginning the migration to this new operating system.

I had not done a fresh install of my main computer in many years, so I was very concerned that I was able to keep my various settings, as well as applications that I had grown very fond of over the years.

I made backups of backups, hunted down preference settings and serial numbers, and finally made the switch.

After booting into my fresh operating system, I noticed my machines seem to be responding quicker to normal tasks which was quite pleasant.

I am still amazed the amount of time  necessary for our newly installed machine, which easily reaches 200+ patches, if one includes Microsoft Office, but once done it is like driving a new car, but without that unique scent (some would argue there is a different scent…).

At the moment, my single biggest issue with doing the upgrade, has been the restoration of my files, and this has to do mostly with my usage of Robocopy and User Account Control (UAC).

In the past, using Robocopy was a matter of learning the various command-line switches and writing your script accordingly, and for the most part, this still holds true, but one still needs to manually increase their privileges for the script to work.

This can easily be done, by typing in “cmd” in the program search field, and then holding the “Shift” key, as one right clicks, and selects “Run as administrator”.

I do need to spend some more time to get my backup scripts running with the same robocopy scripts but at the moment I’m happy doing it manually.

At least, I know they are running and completed.

All in all I had been very pleased with the upgrade, and does seem to increase the life of some of your existing computer equipment, assuming you can find compatible drivers.

If for nothing more, you now have a lot longer period till you have to worry about Microsoft no longer supporting your operating system! (See Microsoft Product Lifecycle for XP)

– Andrew
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Saving Private Space – Outlook PSTs

Day 04 - 120305 sunset Shamona Creek es 007
Day 04 – 120305 sunset Shamona Creek es 007

Last week, I spent the better part of the day backing-up all my files to make sure nothing would get lost, which should be common practice, for anyone looking to do an upgrade, or in my case a full rebuild my machine, moving from Windows XP to a brand-new install of Windows 7.

Why?

Well, XP has been my workhorse for several years now, but there are several applications, that are beginning to require Windows 7, namely Adobe Lightroom 4.

For the most part, the Rebuild of my main computer went quite well, and I can see a definite improvement in the general speed of my main desktop.

I also spent a fair amount of time prior to the upgrade, tracking down the various serial numbers which lay hidden in numerous e-mails that I have accumulated over the years.

There were a few applications that I have reservations about in my move to Windows 7 but after a day or two, my fears were alleviated.

Today, was my day to finally get back in touch with the real world, and tweak my Outlook 2007 for my new environment.

In my haste, trying to get back online last week, I inadvertently connected the wrong PST as my default, and this morning I paid for it.

After trying to do what one would think simple to clean-up of my mistake, I decided to go ahead and just create a brand-new PST.

What really amazed me, was that I was able to save approximately 600MBs of disk space just by copying the emails to the new PST, and that was after contacting the original PST!

So the moral of this quick story, or should I say rant, is that if you need to recuperate some disk space, one might take a look at copying your old emails to a new PST, but be forewarned it can take some time.

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