Coffee Grinder

I decided to get a coffee bean grinder. Starbucks has screwed up my order 3 times in the past 6 months, I even started getting half pound bags because of it, but I ask for them to grind it for Espresso, and I get it home and it is not ground for Espresso. Well, now I can buy my coffee beans at Wegmans, or anywhere and ground them myself as I need it, and not limited to Espresso, but regular coffee too. I haven't used my regular coffee brewer except once in the last 6 weeks. I am getting ready to store it. And to think I was looking to buy another one for spare parts a few blogs ago, because they discontinued the model I use. Don't get me wrong, it still makes the best coffee, I just drink too much when I brew it. I am down to about 4-5, 4 ounce espressos', or Cafe Breve (espresso shot with a little cream, and about 1- 1 1/2 ounces of hot water) a day. Then I usually buy a 12 or 16 ounce regular coffee when I am out and about, or at work. So I have averaged about 28 - 35 ounces of coffee a day. Much better then the 50 -66 or more ounces I had been drinking! I often wonder too, how many tip when they buy something from Starbucks, or Dunkin Donuts? If you are paying 2.50 for a Red Eye, and then add tip, that is an expensive drink. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I used to work in the food/hospitality industry, but I just don't see giving a tip when you are paying those types of prices. I think Mcdonalds coffee is just as good and half the price. And just to note, if you are watching your sodium intake, Dunkin Donuts is 60mg per 10 ounces, and the other big 2, Starbucks and Mcdonalds are 10mg per 10 ounces. I have put this down from memory, as I researched it over a year ago, but I will look it up again, just to make sure I am quoting the right figures.

Half Me Spin - 3D spin

I am building on yesterdays "Hello World" post. I was testing the same Hello World code with a picture. Just something I threw together quick.

One of my Photos used on a Website! Hooray!!!!

Finally, one of my photos was selected to be used on a website. The woman contacted me and asked if she could use the picture. That's a first for me! She said there are 2 more she wants to use. It made my day, week, year. If you can't get the the link I have included for the web page where my picture is located. I have a copy of what she used it for here:

Webpage link

Some things...

The, first is my eyeglasses. I never thought of having corrective eye surgery before my eye glasses broke. I had this one pair for about 8 years and I just keep getting new lenses for them. They are so light, I love them, but they dropped to the carpeted floor and the one side broke off. Okay, so I wore them for about 2 weeks thinking I'll call the eye doctor and get them repaired, or replaced. Then the other side broke off. I have a lot of stylish eyeglasses from previous years, and I have been wearing them with the old RX for about 3 months, and it is very frustrating. I do get a lot of comments from people about some kind of stylish statement I am trying to make. I tell some of them the truth about my glasses breaking, and take the compliment from the others. I am just being stubborn not getting new glasses or lenses. Come the new year, my Health Benefits will cover another pair of lenses. I tried wearing my contacts, but after the first day with no problem, the second day, I tried to take one out, that wasn't ever in my eye, and my eye got red. So I decided not to wear them for now. I am seriously thinking about the corrective eye surgery, it has been a real problem. My Sister had the surgery and has no problems.

The second thing, I've only made one pot of coffee in the past 4 weeks. Of course I still drink coffee, but I have cut back on the amount of liquids I drink. I was drinking about 2 quarts of coffee a day. Any where from 50 to 64+ ounces a day. I would have 20 or more ounces downed before I left the house. I didn't always want to drink it all, but I hate wasting things. Now depending on if I am at work or at home I drink 1 -2, 4 ounce espresso's a day, and about a 16 and 12 ounce coffee. At home I just drink espresso,and maybe one coffee as I go about my errands around town.. So, I am down to about 28 - 35 ounces of coffee a day. That is much better. If you think about it, you become chained to your coffee cup. I am just as satisfied with the 3-4 ounces of espresso, and I can get a lot more done.

Cheetah3D "Hello World" first program

Well it's been a long time since I posted anything, and I know how I dislike browsing to old blogs, so I will try to keep updating at least once a week. This first post is a test post to see if the first program I made with Cheetah3D, Hello World" works when I post it up to the blog. It works for me on my computer. So here it comes;



I hope it works, it is in the format for an iPhone.
I hope to do some 3D Modeling of people, body parts etc...,and other objects and animation too!

Time Machine

Time Machine backup strategy/solution. I was able to get a 1TB USB 2.0 external hard drive for just a little over a $100 after the rebate. I paid a little more in October 2007 for my original 500 GB external hard drive to use with Time Machine. The 500 gb drive was down to 100 GB left, and I wanted to get the 1TB drive to move the backups over to the new drive, and erase and reformat the old hard drive to use for my digital pictures, and also as a network share off my Apple Airport Extreme, so I can move files back and forth between the MacBook Air, and the G5 Powermac that has 2 internal 400 gb drives. So I should theoretically be covered by the 1 TB drive, since the MacBook Air has an 80 GB hard drive (about 74 available for use), and the two, 400 Gb hard drives (about 370 available for use), so that leaves a total of a little over 800 GB possible to be backed up to the 1 TB drive ( about 931 available for use.

When I bought the G5 PowerMac in 2005, I knew I was going to use it for digital video, and Photography, so I loaded up on the hard drive space. I was starting to run low on space though, even with the bigger hard drives, and I just started taking pictures with my Nikon DSLR this year.

It took 12 hours to copy the approximately 350 GB over to the new hard drive, and then another 6 hours to verify the information on the new hard drive. I had renamed the volume the same as the old volume, and held my breath as I turned off the old hard drive, and then turned on the Time Machine backup, and it connected back up to the new hard drive, and did the hourly backup. I checked the backups, and everything back to the original October 2007 backup was still there,success, Wow!

Definitly a better solution now for the MacBook Air too, now it is easier to share and use files and programs from the shared network hard drive, rather then keeping on the hard drive of the MacBook Air.

I'm shaking off a small cold or flu, just had the flu shot last Tuesday, and today my nose is running,congested, headache, slight fever. Finally napped about an hour, and my nose has dried up, and sore throat gone, so hopefully I'm good to go for the new week.

Some things...

Just catching up on a few things while my bread is baking in the bread machine. Still another hour to go until it is done baking. Put some pictures up to Photrade that I had taken in the last 2-3 weeks. Added a picture of My New Ride - A 2008 Suzuki SX4 Sport. My old Suzuki is 9 years old, so time to give it a break every now and then, I want to keep it a few more years. Bought a Blue Coffee Pot to cook/Boil my coffeed outside over the campstove. It is a different taste, not bad, every once in awhile, but don't think I would want to drink it everyday. I have been fortunate not to have any problems with indigestion so far in my life, but if I did drink that coffee every day, I know it would give me indigestion.
Working on getting more contacts on photrade, ones I like, and adding their picutures here on my blog.
I bought a pork loin, beef roast, and 10 pound frozen turkey yesterday, so I will be doing some cooking in the Big Green Egg, today, and later this week. Most likely cook the turkey later this week, or next weekend. That should hold me over for a month or so, escpecially with the Holidays so near, I'll probably end up getting another turkey or two. Also haven't baked a pie in the Big Green Egg for awhile, time to start thinking on what kind I want to bake.

Just a quick post - photrade pictures

I'm finally getting around to put up aother post here on the blog. I am going to post pictures from other user's on Photrade that I like, from my contacts, or just random photos I like. The one I am posting today is from "Elisa", "After the Party". From her color gallery. I like her pictures, lots of experimenting. I am always looking forward to seeing the newest picture she puts up there on Photrade. I'll be out taking some pictures soon, and then posting them here again too.
I hadn't been out taking pictures for awhile, the weather, a cold, a toothache, and now hard disk (storage) space getting low, has been holding me back.
That's all for now, be back soon...
Heres is a picture of Tims (see attribution below picture), he made a comment on this post, said he liked the idea of featuring other photographers photos on my blog and is thinking of doing the same. Thanks Time. I like this HDR picture Tim took at the Texas Classic Car Show 2008 Rudy’s Country Store and Barbeque make a wish foundation classic cars. I would like to take more HDR pictures, but I will have to upadate my camera to one that can take bracketed exposures. Right now the Nikon D40x I use, I have to combine the exposures in the camera. Nice picture Tim! Thanks for sharing!

iPhone Home Page 3 - Japanese Language and Photography reference page

Here is a screen shot of my iPhone Home page number 3. I have a lot of useful Japanese Language reference applications, and study aids. This along with my "Kanji as Art" theme is helping me learn a little bit of Japanese, and also Chinese languages. I also have some books, texts that are very good too. I should have my Art table cleared off this weekend, then I can start practice writing the Kangi, and Kana scripts. I also have two photography reference applications on this page. The one marks your gps location for later use with the picture, and the other helps you choose the correct exposure, aperture, ... and almost made for film, but very helpful for taking manual pictures with my DSLR. The iFlippr app has some Japanese, and Chinese flip cards.

I blogged about this earlier, about how I verified for a guy that his Tattoo in Kanji, actually meant "Eternal Life" in Chineese too. I used my iPhone application, Jishabot.
The iPhone screen shot at the top today is of the Kanji Flip iPhone application. The Kanji shown is "South".

Picture Changes

I changed out some pictures tonight and replaced with some other pictures. I added the photo above of the Farm lane taken with my Sigma Wide Angle 17-35mm lens. I combined 2-3 pictures together to get it this wide. This picture is also to remind me I have to get out there and take some wide angle fall foilage sceneary pictures. I also took off the caterpillar picture and replaced it with a blue wine grape, to contrast with the purple wine grape below it. Pictures of the new car soon to be posted.

Taking pictures with my Lensbaby, and new Car

I was at a picnic Saturday, took about 250 pictures with the Lensbaby 2 lens,and f 2.8 aperture disk, with 1.6x telephoto. Not many keepers in the bunch (series), still weeding through them all. Artistically I like some of them, but they are not in the normal sense, to the average person, the idea of what a picture should look like. A lot of blur/bokah (selective focus), and softness.
I choose the wrong aperture. I should of went with f5.8 or higher. I thought with the overcast, lowlight, indoor ,and outdoor change of shooting scene, the 2.8 aperature would give me a lot of light to work with, but it also gave me more blur and softness, when I wanted more strong focus. Plus the fact I am shooting from the hip, not composing many shots, and then the indoor lighting giving the yellowish tint, I should of changed my camera setting to reflect the indoor lighting but forgot. Even with the 1.6x telephoto, it is still bascially a foot zoom lens, meaning you have to move with your feet to focus, rather than moving the lens, so sometimes you get the picture, and sometimes you don't. I should of known the 2.8 aperture was too low, so unless I have the time to compose the picture, take my time, and review afterwards, I will go with f/4 or above from now on.

Bought my new car on Wednesday. A 2008 Suzuki SX4 Sport. 0% financing. Took about 1 1/2 hours at the dealer to seal the deal, and then I drove home, and got a ride back in to pick up the new car. The car has everything I was hoping to get when I started my search. I will have to write more on this later, especially the fact that the Ford Focus looks strikingly similar to the Suzuki SX4 Sport. Just like my Suzuki 2 door Vitara, looks like a Chevy Tracker. In both cases I got the better deal with Suzuki. Once the weather clears up I will post some pictures of my new car.

Favorite things discontinued - And some New Things

I was going to order another vacuum coffee maker this weekend, either the 5 cup model, or another 10 cup model, but Bodem-Santos has discontinued the electric vacuum coffee maker. The stove top model won't work for me. The electric model has a timer, and is nicely compact, works great. It is even a form of entertainment watching the coffee brew through the clear plastic. The steam produced by the heated water in the bottom pushes the heated water up into the top where it mixes with the coffee grounds and boils, then when the heat is off, it all comes back down into the bottom again, ready to drink. Hot! 196 degrees at least. That is just one of the 3 or 4 items in the last month that I tried to get that is now discontinued. I am on a roll here.
I am going out car shopping tomorrow. My little 4 wheel drive is now in it 9th year, and I think it needs to be driven less for it to last me a few more years. I was hoping to wait about 2 more years to get another car, but tomorrow might be the day.
Another Suzuki for me. Either the SX4 Sport ( good financing till 9/30) or the SX4 Crossover.
The picutures here are of a pine cone in the drive way, looks sort of interesting/abstract maybe, and the wasp on the yellow flower is one of my favorites.

Lensbaby came out with some new SLR Lenses today;

"THREE LENSES,INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
No two eyes are exactly the same – especially when they belong to an artist who sees for a living. Given these infinite possibilities, Lensbaby offers three distinctly different lens bodies for different types of shooters. Each lens gets you to the same place: a Sweet Spot of sharp focus surrounded by graduated blur. But each one gets you there in a way that reflects your individual personality and shooting style. Are you fast and loose? Smooth and precise? Methodical and step-by-step? Your first decision is: which Lensbaby has your name on it?"

I think the Lensbaby Composer has my name on it....

10 million things to do this Weekend, and not enough time to do them

Well that's what it seems like! Shopping, cooking, cleaning, Web Classes,Meal Planning for the week, pay bills,getting things prepared, and ready for Winter, even though it is months away. I am going to get my heater up and going this weekend, as the mornings are getting cool, but it's the dampness that is bone chilling more often than the cold.
I will be spending time catching up on my Web Classes, as I fell behind when my iPhone was crashing b4 the 2.1 upgrade, and I spent a lot of time on that, and my digital photography, when I should of also been working on the Web Classes. I think I need an assistant, and will leave it at that...
More to post later today, but I have to get out shopping, and start completing my list of 10 million things I have to do today.

White Pumpkin in field of Orange

Went to the pumpkin field tonight that I was going to go to last night, and was in luck. They were getting ready to harvest around 6PM and only the boss was their. I asked if I could walk in the field, and take pictures, and he had no problem letting me take pictures. They grow pumpkins, and gourds for Wal-Mart, Target... all the big name stores, he was telling me all the acreage they have all over the place that they rent, and grow the pumpkins on. It spans multiple counties. He let me take the white pumpkin, and a few other ones too. As usual, more pictures on my Photrade page. They also grow gourds together with the pumpkins, and had a flatbed trailer loaded with containers of gourds. He said I could drive my car into the field to load it up if I wanted to, but it looked a little bit too steep even for my 4 wheel drive. I would of loved to have gotten a picture of my blue car with the white top in that field of Orange.

Autumn Harvest begins

The Autumn Harvest season is upon us now. Fall is only a few days away, Halloween is 44 days, Thanksgiving 71 days, and 99 shopping days until Christmas. Driving around the Topton, Kutztown, Maxatawny area I came across the Farmer's harvesting their pumpkin crop for market the past 2 nights. Still a lot of pumpkins out in the fields. The pictures I posted here tonight are from Burkholder's Farm Market outside of Kutztown. I have some pictures from the commercial farm fields I took today, but not posted yet on my photrade web page. They have security in trucks patrolling the roads around the fields. They waved to me as I was in the field taking pictures. Must of thought I was from a newspaper. Didn't take any free pumpkins, I will buy them if I want them. They looked so tempting though, and I just love drawing and painting pumpkins.

Telework - Meal Plan - Bake Bread

I'm Teleworking from home today, something we can do about 4-6 times a month. There are the obvious advantages of saving on your gas bill from your daily commute, and for me that is about 1 hour of total travel time. l still get up early, and shower, dress casual, and make my breakfast, and lunch like I was going into the office. I could work in my P.J's if I wanted to. But what I like the best is, being able to sit at my desk, and feel the refreshing breeze coming in through the screen window, You can't get that in the office. It's an Ahhhhhh.... feeling! I must admit I do work harder at home, most likely because there are no distractions.

I've got to get back on my meal plan. For a whole year I was planning all my meals at least 3-5 days in advance, but usually 5-10 days. A great learning experiance too. I rarely had food go to waste, or forget that I had something in the refrig to eat. Now I took a break for a little more then a month, and I am back to eating candy, chips, cupcakes, ice cream instead of the fruit and vegatables I should be eating. I eat anything and everything on my meal plan, just in moderation, and not out of despartion, or being lazy. I use a program called Weightmania Pro of the same web site name, and it was about $60. I track sodium, sugar, carbs, protein..., and the percentages or ratio of the carbs/fat/protein in my daily meal plan, over a period of time from like 1 week, 1month, 1 year, or whatever range you specify. So this week I shall crack the whip and get back on track. The image below is a rolling 30 day pie chart, you can choose daily, 7 day, 14 days too. This is just one of the many data tracking abilities of this program.





Baking my own bread now since Februrary. I found out that most of the sodium/salt in my diet came from bread/cheese/pastries, and other baked goods. I found some recipes on a no sodium web site, and have been baking my own bread in the bread machine ever since. I also use honey instead of sugar and no salt margarine/butter. Sometimes I use the honey that is produced here on the farm. When I use the commercial honey I buy in the store, it gives the bread a browner color. The honey from the farm has no color. As for not using salt in the bread dough recipe, a lot of people tell me I have to use salt or my bread won't rise or bake, but I have found out different. I saw on a Food Network program, the host said you don't have to use salt, the bread just rises slower. Plus sodium is a preservative and used to flavor. So, later tonight I will bake a loaf, it takes 4 hours, and then time to cool. But oh is it so worth it...!

I found some things I like to eat every day, the foundation of my Meal Plan, and will elaborate more on that later, or in another post. I will also post one of my favorite recipes and explain how I developed it over a period of time.

Wow, what a busy weekend! Not even any time to micro blog on one of my many distractions, err I mean hobbies. Went out Saturday morning to take pictures of my Bell Peppers finally turning yellow, and noticed the tomato horn worm neatly camoflaged in their among the pepper plants. See the 2 pictures here off to the right, or I have 3 on my Photrade gallery. It is covered with the cocoons of the Braconid wasp, and I heard not to destroy because they are beneficial wasps, and that this caterpillar is doomed.
Then I cooked 2 large Pork Loins in the Big Green Egg ceramic grill, and came out with 6 total pounds of meat, and I also grilled 2 big Red Beets from the garden. The red beets tasted really good.
My house is 70 miles away so I usually head up there every 2 - 3 weeks to cut the grass, check things out, etc..., stopped in at my Mom's today too, and had some of her famous Chile, so finally back on the farm, and settling down for the evening. Gonna be nice the next few months with Autumn just around the corner. The pumpkin fields are overflowing with pumpkins, the air is getting cooler and crisper, and pretty soon we will be smelling the leaves burning all around the area, as the people clean up their yards. The Sun is setting lower, and the light is at a different angle and color, and then the big orange Harvest Moon to top it all off! I don't think I could ever live anywhere that doesn't have a change of seasons!

Aperture Nature Photography Workshops Contest

Oh well my Saddleback Caterpillar Photo didn't get me to the workshop. A week in Jacksonhole, Wy at the Grand Tetons would of been real nice. Beleive it or not, 3 out of the 4 pictures chosen pictures were scenic views, or landscapes, heavily edited, HDR, IR and looked more like Thomas Kincade oil paintings than natural real photographs.
I would think nature, natural, plants, animal, bugs, insects, fish... not all scenery and landscapes would of been the chosen winning pictures. Where is the rationel for each selection? The reason it was picked, and why?s Just the pictures, no explanations for the selections given.(To see the picture I submitted, look in my Insect, bug... gallery by clicking on one of the Photrade links)

Tonight I think I will add 2 of the grape pictures I took around the farm, from my Cherry and Grapes gallery. One of the pictures looks like raisins on the vine, dried up, and the other one was on the ground, and has a bite taken out of it by a bird.

In the next day or two I will have to post a picture of my iPhone page with all the Kanji and Japanese Language apps I have installed on my iPhone. Almost a whole page full (you can have 16 total apps on one page). Later I will give a brief explanation about the language and what it entails to learn it, pronounciation, written, graphic... , and today I ran into a stranger at work with a Kanji tatoo. I asked him if he knew what it meant. He said he, and a few of his close friends all have the same tattoo. They researched it, and he said it was Chinese for Eternal Life. Which would be right because the Japanese Language evolved out of Chinese Language, and that is where we will pick up the rest of the story later on the Jananese Language. I looked up Eternal Life on my iPhone App, Jishobot: English/Japanese Dictionary, and there were 3 results for Eternal Life, and his Kanji tatoo was one of them.

Lilly, iPhone, Kanji,

Edited the Blog title, added one of my drawings from life drawing class. Just changing things up a bit, see what works out best. 

This morning I can't decided what picture I want to spotlight from my Photrade Gallery. And when I choose one, and write about the picture, in the future it won't be attached to the blog in the Archive, but still in the Photrade Gallery website. So, I will always have to make that reference to view the picture on that site, if reading from the Archive. 

Not much happening from the Apple Special Event September 9, 2008 that was earth shattering,  but nice upgrade to the iPod/iTouch line, and iTunes 8. Now I can hopefully add the 97 apps I downloaded back onto my iPhone and it won't crash. I was restoring my iPhone and backing it up too much, and it was taking up most of my time. I felt like I was back in pre Apple Computer days of 1999 before I switched to Mac. I was constantly having to restore the Operating System software, and then the applications, and any data I could salvage. With the iPhone 2.1 OS coming out on Friday, Steve Jobs said at the Keynote, that these issues were addressed.

The iPhone issue is causing a Domino effect on everything else in my life, I am 2 weeks behind on the 2 Web classes I am taking, and new classes come out on Wednesday and Friday. So I have a lot of catching up to do, and that is just the beginning.

A quick word on the Japanese Kanji as Art. I think taking the art approach as I am with Kanji will help get back into painting, more specifically Watercolor, and Pen & Ink. I really miss it, and the digital photography has filled that creative gap so far. Plus the photography is instant gratification. 

Time to get ready for the day job, the picture for today will be Lilly, the farm dog. She is so fast it's hard to get a picture of her standing still. I like this one I took, almost like she is posing, vouge, for the picture. I have some more of her in my picture gallery's too. (Oh good, I just figured out how to edit my post's. I'm still finding my writing voice and style, and going through a little learning curve with the blog)

Smiling Yellow Jacket

Another picture from my album on Photrade. I will have to figure out how to make thumb nails of previous pictures, and I want to add a few more gadgets to the blog, but for now I have to get ready for my real day job!

First Blog Post - mostly a test.

One of many pictures I have taken with my digital camera, a Nikon D40x. This one of the Caterpillar, was taken with a lensbaby 2.0 Selective Focus Lens. I am mostly using one of my 2 Lensbaby lenses right now for pictures, and will post a lot more links to my Photrade page. Hope you like them.