Music of the moment ;)

This music rocks, I know, listening now when I SHOULD be in bed :)

Guns N roses - Sweet Child O Mine
A true classic in all senses. Gotta love the insane vocal performance by Axl Rose towards the end of the song. The guitar work is amazing all throughout. This is currently my favorite song of all time.

Linkin Park - What I've Done
A canadian band eh? :) Those of you in Potsdam can probably hear lots of Linkin Park on 106.9 The Bear! Canadian radio is sooo much better.

System of a Down- Lonely Day
The only System of a Down song that I really like. Quite a departure from their normal style hm?

Gob - I Hear You Calling
First heard this one in a computer game.. NHL 2005. Or was it 2004?

The Killers - Somebody Told Me
Just plain catchy. Can't help but to sing along.

Jet - Look What You've Done
Pretty much the only Jet song that really stands out in my opinion. I heard it live June of 2006 when Jet opened for Oasis at MSG in New York City. A truly awesome night of my life that I'll never forget.

Twisted Sister - Were Not Gonna Take It
Hehe... :) Gotta see this ;) It's also a very catchy song. Consider yourself warned.

Third Eye Blind - Jumper
This one takes me back :) Heard this for the first time on a school bus. This song has Quite possibly THE most addicting guitar solo of all time... if you've heard the song then you know the solo I'm talking about!! Find a more addicting guitar solo!!! Can't be done. Hats off T.E.B!

Silver Chair - Anthem for the Year 2000
Older... and heavier than most of my music but still very cool, even today.

Zeromancer - Send Me An Angel
Don't really care for the band, or this type of music but this song catches my ear. Its something different. Very soft and appealing approach to alternative.

U2 - New Year's Day
This might very well read 'U2 - *'. I've never heard a U2 song that I have not liked. These guys cannot make crappy music. It just doesn't happen! Bono's the man!

Anyways...
Life has pretty much sucked for the last 3 months. On the upside... things are looking up. Spring is coming (yay!! Good weather and bike riding!!), I have a cool new toy to play with (Canon HG10 digital camcorder), and I'm finally getting my life back in order after months of hell:

• I started exercising again
• I went sledding last week (first time in 10-15 years??)
• Organized all the data on my computer
• Went back to work. Didn't miss much... snail's pace and such :-P
• Cleaned my desk
• Organized my storage room
• Ate a meatless meal for the first time in... my whole life.. ;) It was actually pretty good... go figure.
  
• ... and other stuff.

I suppose I better get to bed if I want to be functional in the AM.

Roberson Photoclub Webpage

I get to design a web application for management of the Roberson Photography club and its webpage. That is all. :)

Biking a lot recently

I haven't been posting here recently but I have been posting to my biking blog. Check out these entries:


Otsiningo Park Ride
Rode to work on Friday
Rode to Maine NY

Bike rides!

I've set up this blog to track the planning and progress of a (roughly) 250 mile bike ride that I will be taking some time in the summer/fall of 2008. The trip will be starting at my apartment in Endicott NY and ending in Brushton NY. My wife Tiffanie will be accompanying me on the ride. We have a little over a year to plan and prepare for the trip. As we plan and prepare we'll be updating this blog to track and record decisions and progress. I'll also be posting info about some smaller trips we'll be doing for fun and in preparation for the big trip.

http://250mileride.blogspot.com/

Mouth pain sucks :(

..... It all started Monday. After laying down I woke up almost exactly 40 minutes later with fairly intense mouth pain. The whole right side of my jaw ached. So I got up, drank some water and went back to bed and slept fine the rest of the night. So I didn't think much of it .... Until Tuesday night when the very same thing happened again. This time it woke me up twice!! So I stayed up for 4 hours and then I slept through the next 2 hours before I had to get up and go to work. Wednesday same as Tuesday and Thursday even worse. I had to leave work early Thursday because I was too tired to think. Before heading home I called a dentist and made an appointment for Monday to have my mouth looked at. I went home and tried to sleep and caught about another 2 hours before being woken up with mouth pain again.

Oddly enough the pain would affect the entire right side of jaw top and bottom. I could not even come close to figuring out if the pain was being caused by a single tooth. Also, it only seemed to hurt when I was laying down. Thursday I went for a bike ride with Tiff and Tom after my nap and a quick dinner. That turned out to be a big mistake! Afterwards my mouth hurt like hell!! I loaded up on Ibuprofen and luckily the pain only lasted for about a half an hour.

Friday rolled around and the pain comes and goes all day long from 8am to 5pm. Then somewhere around 5 the demons in my mouth decided to unleash their grand finale of furry on my poor nerves!! The pain kicked in worse than ever before and refused to let up. I quickly discovered that having cold water in my mouth (i.e: Keeping the nerve numb?? Maybe keeping the swelling down??) made the pain subside to barely detectable levels so water I did drink :) And lots of it! At this point I had fooled myself into thinking that the pain would go away and I would be fine until my Monday appointment.. hehe.. that was a mistake. Every 20-30m or so I would stop drinking water just to see if the pain had stopped but, on the contrary, it kept getting worse and worse. Around 8pm I had decided I'd had enough and called my dentist's emergency number. He got me in one hour (and about 6 bottles of water) later for an emergency Pulpotomy which was an interesting experience.

Step 1: Figure out which tooth is causing the pain
This involves banging on all of the affecting teeth to find out which ones cause sharp pain. If this fails the next step is to heat (with a small torch) a small rubber-like thingy and touch it against each tooth until the right one is found. The 'cause pain via heat' method was successful in isolating the pain to one of two teeth in my upper jaw. Now we get out the novacaine needle and numb the lower jaw to ensure I still feel pain after its numb. I still felt pain. Now we numb the suspected tooth and see if the pain goes away... 3 injections later... wait for it.. ahhh yes :-D BEST I HAD FELT ALL DAY!!!! We found the right tooth.

Step 2: Drill off the top of the tooth and rip out the dead part of the nerve
I hate having power tools in my mouth. This actually went ok with no pain at all. Thank you modern medicine and local anesthetics!!!

Step 3: Apply medicine and a temporary filling
Easiest part... was done before I knew it had started!

Step 4: Sleep!!
Best I had slept in days!! I did wake up after the novacaine wore off but I was able to get back to sleep after eating a (sliced) apple.

It was a fairly painful and somewhat nerve racking experience but the dentist who did the work (on a Friday night when he should have been spending time with his family) was very professional and thorough. He gave up the start of his weekend and did a good job making my pain go away... thank god... I didn't want to have to jump off the balcony!

I have an appointment Monday to finish the root canal. I am less than excited but it has to be done. I hear its just like having a deep filling done.

Blue Man Group!

Tiff, Tom and I went to see the Blue Man Group (www.blueman.com) in Binghamton last night. The show was awesome!!

The pictures with the new Pentax K10D came out awesome considering the low-light shooting environment. My only two regrets are 1) Not getting to know the camera a little better 2) Shooting most of the night at ISO 1600 instead of ISO 800!! 800 is SSOOOOOOOOOOO much less grainy!! I spent quite a bit of time fishing for buttons and hunting for settings because I've only had the camera a couple of days. The opening act by Mike Relm was not very well lit which caused me to set my ISO at 1600 to be on the safe side. I then proceeded to shoot through most of the show at 1600 which produced noisy/grainy shots. They are still far better than I would have got with the DS, but I would have liked to take more at ISO 800 as the level of visible noise is far far far less! There are some shots taken at 800 in my Picasa gallery if you want to see the difference. I ended up shooting about 1200 pictures 106 of which made it into the Picasa gallery. 10% shooting rate is quite good in my opinion considering that I was shooting in low light, much of the time the subjects were moving rapidly, I did a lot of burst shooting and the lighting often changed rapidly as spot lights and colored lights lit up and faded away and bounced around the stage.

Anyways, we all had a blast and the show was really different and cool. Tiff really enjoyed herself which is the most important thing as she was the one who wanted to go originally.

Enjoy the photos ;)

Blue Man Group

I Sleep with Penguins!

Tiff and I got this SUPER COOL BED SET from K-mart two days ago!! Aren't they the coolest sheets ever? The penguins protect me from evil all through the night. I no longer have to sleep with one eye open (Sorry Metallica)!




And if the penguins are not enough... I have "Nibbles the Super Giant Miniature Ninja Killer Attack Cat of Doom from the Ninth Ring of the Seventh level of the Third floor of the Darkest Part of the Abyss!" Thats her full name. We call her Nibbles for short.

Christmas pictures!!

Christmas pictures!! Late? Yea. Still cool? Yep.

Christmas 2006

Rail Trail Walk

Tiff, Tom and myself decided to walk the Vestal Rail Trail to get some exercise. Tom and I brought our cameras just for fun :) This was my first actual photo shoot since our trip to Texas. I didn't get a whole lot of good shots but I decided to post some anyway. It was fun :) Click for pictures!!!

Walking the Rail Trail

New photos :) !!!!!

I've not posted here in a long time! Here are some new (actually NOT so new) photos to make up for my absence (actually it doesn't make up for it)! Soon I'll post some actual new (they are actually new, for real, you'll see) photos.

Click the images to go to the galleries.

Trip to San Antonio Texas

New Computer for Travis

Throat infections suck :(

see title.

Treefs: A Breath of Life

After an 9 month hiatus I've finally started working on TreeFS again!! This is the first I've really had an urge to work on it since I graduated and I'm very excited. Over the last week I've dusted off the code and made it compile for the latest greatest kernel version 2.6.20-rc3 :). I've also started re-familiarizing myself with the code and fixing up some small issues with comments and output. I've rebuilt my development VM that allows me to test my file system without crashing my operating system. So, looks like the only place to go from here is actual development. I do hope my urge to work on this sticks around for a while :-D.

Martin has restarted his work on the GUI TreeFS browser tool and has come up with a really cool looking prototype. I'm excited to see it in action once development has started. I think this tool will be really cool and useful and I'm very happy he's decided to continue work on it.

In case anyone is intersted all of our work can be found here: TreeFS Project Site

The new living room lives!!

We finished reorganizing the living room. Overall it was quite a move that took us two days counting all the cleaning and clutter reduction. :) Here is a spiffy diagram I made to show the difference in dead space reduction!!



As you can see, all of the dead space has been reanimated by a complex form of necromancy to become undead space!! I like it better this way. Just don't walk through the living room with a crucifix or a ceremonial skull ;).

Holy lots of stuff!!

Ok, its been a while. Lets catch up....

Around November 20th Tiff and I went to Texas for Travis' boot camp graduation. We were scheduled to fly out of Syracuse at 6:30pm on Wednesday but thanks to inclement weather in Cleavland (our layover destination) we ended up getting delayed until about 7:00 pm. Thanks to the delay we were actually scheduled to miss our connecting flight to Austin by over an hour but, luckily for us, the weather in Cleavland delayed that flight as well :) We ended up getting there JUST in time to get on the flight to Austin. We were rushed from one gate right to the other and right back on a place for a 2.5 hour flight. We then drove from Austin to San Antonio in our rental vehicle and arrived at Lackland air force base at about 2:30 am.

Travis' graduation was cool and everyone was very happy to see him for the first time in months. They had two or three different events for families and such. We spent most of our time walking around the base and attending his graduation events. I took lots of pictures and in due time I'll even post some of them!!

About a month ago we got a Nintendo Wii. I didn't plan on getting one but then I played one at Tom's house on Thanksgiving!! After 5 minutes I was hooked! It lives up to the hype and provides a genuinely different, fun and energetic gaming experience that you will not soon forget. Everyone we've shown our Wii to since we've gotten it has been absolutely taken up with it. In fact, my family has already started saving for it, I brought it home for Christmas so I could show everyone!! Tiff's family couldn't get enough of it either. We were up until 5am playing the thing on the 22nd. I think they will eventually buy one.

Christmas has come and gone. It was very nice to see everyone. We had a very busy but oddly a relatively argument free and enjoyable time :-D Tiff made lots of food and spent a great deal of time planning a party and cooking and cleaning. But I think she managed to find some time to enjoy herself in there. Santa was good to us again this year. He provided us with some new computer chairs so we don't have to sit in kitchen chairs at our computers anymore. I got a wall mount corner shelf unit (and a book light) so I have a place to put my book that I like to read at night. I also got a new sweater and a tin of those yummy butter cookies. Tiff got some coffees, teas, a Friends trivia DVD game and the Let's Make a Deal DVD game. Tom was good to us ;) I got the second Wii Nunchuck controller I was looking for and Tiff got a bottle of really expensive Bio-Silk.... It's some crazy hair care product. We both got other miscellaneous things but those are the highlights. We got Zach an MP3 player for xmas/birthday. I think he likes it. Travis got a very well put together photo album that Tiff spent forever on. It has pictures in it from the summer before his high school graduation and his experiences in boot camp and graduation. Most of the pictures were *expertly* taken by a skilled photographer using a very nice camera ;) hehehe... Ok ok, I know I'm not that worthy of praise!

Soo... that catches us up to the current time! Only a few more interesting things to note. One, Tom was unfortunate enough to get a pink slip for xmas from his employer. Apparently they wanted to hire someone for his position that could move up to management. I'm assuming Tom is not qualified because his degree is in Graphic Arts..... and we all know how hard the business majors works in college... ahem..... I think maybe his work ethic is simply too high for a management position... keep in mind.. this IS a government job! So anyways, he is looking for a job anywhere he can find one. He is actually following up a possible job somewhere in our area :)

Tera got her splint off yesterday!! She has this odd infection underneath it and a raw bloody spot where it was digging into her leg for so long. We have pills to feed her to clean up the infection so hopefully she'll soon be fully recovered.

Finally, last night we decided to fully rearrange the living room. I'll post pictures and maybe (if I don't get too lazy...... yea don't expect anything) even a floor plan showing the changes. We now have a lot more space in the living room and we increased the distance from the Wii to the TV from about 3-4 feet to about 7-8 feet. This will make for a much more Wii-markable experience!

Ok, now that I've caught up I need to go finish cleaning our newly laid out living room and finish being sick... Tiff and I BOTH got sick for Christmas. We're, hopefully, on the upswing now though.

Life is busy

Its been a while since I've posted :) Since the last time... I've been to Texas, been home for thanksgiving and I've decided to buy a Nintendo Wii. More later ;) Tonight I'm going out for a fairly expensive diner courtesy of Big Blue! :-D

Binghamton Walk

Tom Tiff and I went on a small photo shoot in Binghamton. Not the best of photos but we did manage to snap a few good shots. Here are the results :)

Binghamton Walk

In other news, Tiff and I will be heading to Texas Wednesday. We'll be there for 4 days so I'm SURE I'll have a gaint gallery to post after we get back!!

Bibble Pro Review

.....WOW!! That's all I have to say about this photo raw conversion software! It is totally amazing! Its noise reduction feature renders a raw picture taken at ISO 800 on my Pentax DS and makes it look more like an ISO 200 shot!

Here is my original ISO 800 shot


And here is the Bibble processed version with noise reduction, and sharpening filters added.


You'll have to click on the images and open them in new windows to really see the difference. Pay particular attention to the binders towards the right side, the video cassette, and the tux I am wearing in the prom picture sitting on the shelf.

Consider this my recommendation for Bibble Pro!! :) I think I'll be purchasing a Linux license right after my two week demo expires.

NYC - Photo Plus 2006

The Photo Plus expo was decently cool this year :)

I got a chance to play with the Pentax K10D and I gotta say it was pretty cool. The autofocus was insanely fast, especially when compared to my DS. It seems to take nice pictures and they had some demo prints that showed how accurate the auto-color balance and image processing was. They also had a set that showed a very crisp low-light exposure and claimed that it was due to the anti-shake technology. I know enough not to read too deeply into any company's marketing ploys which is why I'll wait for detailed reviews to surface before getting too excited.

Another interesting find... Bibble Pro, A Raw conversion software package that seems really slick and has some pretty cool noise reduction and dynamic range recoverability features. The presenter was touting that one could save many otherwise busted shots with these two features. I am skeptical, as usual, but I was very intrigued and will be trying this software out. They have a free fully functioning (for two weeks) demo.. and best of all... IT RUNS ON LINUX!!!!!!!! :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) (As well as windows and Mac OS X).

There were lots of other software companies, I was not too interested in them. Lots of companies that do prints over the internet and lots of people trying to sell massive printers that look more like plotters.

After the expo we walked from the Javits Center to central park. We walked around central park and took pictures and then walked to 60th and 5th which is where our bus was picking us up. We ate at some deli around there for lunch/dinner. Tiff had a #205, ham, cheese and sun dried tomatoes on 7-grain bread. I has a #208, a BLT/Turkey sandwich with herb mayo on 7-grain bread.

After dinner we still had about an hour to kill so we went and sat at a restaurant/pub and waited. Some drank, some talked, I decided to take pictures. I'm glad that I did because I managed to get a few nice shots there. You can check them out, along with other pictures from the trip, in my gallery

NYC - Photo Plus 2006

Photo club competition 11/03/2006

Interested in the latest photo club competition results? Heres the link :) I had one photo place 3rd and the other two received honorable mention.

Photo club competition 11/03/2006

Not much to report :-/

Life has been boring the last few days, but the Photo Plus expo is coming up!! I'll get a chance to see the K10D and maybe even take some pictures in NYC.

Also, thanks to a cool (but very poor quality scan) PDF I found by googling "Tinker Tubes" I found some great plans for building pro quality lighting equipment out of PVC pipe!! This is cool because I don't believe in paying $600 for some light stand and a sheet of semi-transparent material. Tom and I may be building one or two items from this PDF some time soon... time, money and tools permitting :)

IN OTHER NEWS... the Avalanche have won 2 in a row, they beat Columbus tonight 4-2 with Joe Sakic picking up a goal and Hejduk with an assist!! They still only have 12 points and are 2nd to last in their division :( 15th in the leage overall, just as middle of the road as you can get.