Nikon night pictures

I was out around 2am on Sunday to take some pictures with my new Nikon D40. I brought my tripod along as I planned to do some shooting with longer exposure times. I also wanted to play with the aperture to get a better understanding between shutter speed and aperture.

What I got was really interesting to me. First, the night had a full moon and it was actually pretty bright. But having the exposure extended really captured so much light that it almost seemed like day. I mean, it was really much darker than what these shots make the evening to be. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good shot of the moon. It looked like a little star in the sky to the camera. I'm going to have to figure out what I was doing wrong in another night.

Anyways, if I take more images I may open a Flikr account to share. Here's some of the night shots. I took a lot more, but most were blurry. It's pretty hard to focus at night when everything looks black to the naked eye :)



Some interesting light streaks from the picture below. Again, totally couldn't see that with the naked eye.


Got this one when a car passed by.


Mandatory picture of a confused Brian.

Lack of posts

Haven't been posting for about a week. Mostly because I'm still very into 3ds Max. There's so much to the program, and I just only realized yesterday that there is a second component to the application called Character Studio. So lots of stuff to go over. Also, as the summer is ending, we're gearing up for the girls to go back to school. Well, for one, this will be her first year in Kindergarten. She's excited but scared at the same time. It's very nostalgic at times to see them go through these phases, as they would remind me of my younger years as well. My entry into the school system up to about the second grade was like a roller coaster. There are some pretty sad "little Dave" stories... but I won't bore you with them :)

Ahh, the start of a new school year. Things are going to get even more crazy. Oh well, that's what it is to be a parent.

On another note, as if I didn't have enough distractions, I purchased a Nikon D40 camera yesterday. Again, even that purchase made me feel a bit nostalgic. I remember when I was very young, my father had an SLR. Don't remember what brand it was. Odd thing is, I don't remember him ever really using it. But the camera was always around. Anyways, it's a good investment for recording these awesome years :)

I'm so very confused

So, today we went from an amazing piece of human discovery about engineering an artificial eye to this...

Clay Aiken has a baby?!? Wait, I thought he was... I mean, wasn't he like... so confused right now. I understand the principles behind the cybernetic eye... but this is just too confusing.

Artificial eye

Came across an article that struck my interest. I think it's amazing when we can replicate a human part or function. It implies that we've learned enough about said part or function to mimic it in mechanical form. In this instance... the human eye. There was something new that I learned about this article that I thought was ingenious of the human body.

The human eye apparently constantly shifts the viewing area by tiny increments to build a higher resolution image that the brain processes as a whole image. Amazing. I mean, I think I'm looking straight forward to type this blog right now, but in reality my eye is making all these micro shifts to build a better picture of what I'm looking at.

So by trying to replicate a human part, we had to decipher this very smart function first. Very cool. From a technology standpoint, you could build a much higher resolution camera with a much smaller CMOS sensor for image resolution. Something that we may have never thought of it we didn't explore this human function. Hats off to you smarties! Keep it up so you can build me a cyberbody that can last me a 1000 years.

Kids are cute

Was raining a bit by the time I got home yesterday from work. It was a nice relief from the heat that day. Anyways, everyone was outside on the front porch, and the girls with their friend from next door were all oil painting on a canvas. Was very cute. Messy, but cute. Was a really nice greeting coming home from work.

Being single and living in the city in my younger days was nice... real nice. But this was definitely better by miles. To the two of you that are about to have little ones. You're in for a great change in life... and the kids couldn't have been brought into this world by better mommies :)

Link time

There are a lot of consumer products out there... some good, some not worth your money. I don't like wasting my money on poor electronics. It's a sin. How do you know what is decent or not? Well, for me, I like real world reviews from people who have used and purchased the devices. What better way to find out if a product is crappy than from the misfortune of others.

One great place for reviews is www.testfreaks.com. It's a really useful resource.

Another place to get user feedback is www.newegg.com. Even if you don't buy from them (which they are a totally safe online retailer), they house a huge amount of user feedback from buyers.

So why are these places better than your Amazon review? These are electronic specific sites that people in the electronic know go to. I wouldn't go here for medical advice... cause they're not that kind of shopper... but for the most part, these reviewers are savvy tech purchasers. Thought I'd share for anyone planning on a tech purchase :)

Paranoid baby

For some reason... Brian always looks paranoid. Probably didn't capture it that well in this picture, but he seems to have this "look", like he's watching out for something. He'll kinda look at you at times out of the corners of his eye, like he doesn't trust you. Sometimes he'll just stare squarely at you... without blinking much. But he always seems to have, what I can only describe as a "paranoid baby stare."

Paranoid baby monologue- "What, what do you want? Why are you holding me? What was that? Was that something? OK, was nothing... but what, you still holding me? Watching you. Watching you good. You'll trip up, and I'll be right here... cause I can't move."

By the way, the camera on the iPhone is horrific. Had to adjust this image to high heaven to not make Brian look green.