Abby Sunderland left Cape Town today to attempt to finish her youngest solo circumnavigation of the globe.
God speed Abby.
Friday May 21, 2010
Sunday May 2, 2010
Jessica’s almost home!
Not sure how many who read this are following Jessica Watson but if you are you know she’s almost home.
Jessica is a 17 year old girl who decided to try to become the youngest person to sail solo, unassisted, and non-stop around the world. She’s now a week or so from arriving home in Sydney Australia. I’ve been following her since a few days after she started in October and it’s been inspiring to read about her trials and joys. She’s had a few knockdowns and some huge seas in the 7 months she’s been sailing.
Abby Sunderland, a 16 year old from Southern Cal left a few months ago to try to beat Jessica’s pending record but she’s having to put in to port to fix a broken auto-pilot. That means she won’t be able to beat Jessica on the non-stop, unassisted part but she can still become the youngest to ever circumnavigate the globe. Abby’s brother was the youngest when he did it a few years ago.
I’ve got links to both girls over in my Links section. Pretty interesting reading if you’ve got some time.
Sunday April 25, 2010
Garden 2010 Version
We planted a garden a few weeks ago. Ok, Patrick planted 90% of it but I helped. Ok, I didn’t help much but I did buy the soil and the plants.
If you recall from last year we planted a garden and the earwigs immediately ate most of it. All that survived last year was the tomatoes and peas. This year we planted all kinds of stuff and dusted with Sevin every few days.
All of the plants seem to be surviving the bugs. A couple of them died for some unknown reason but we hope everything else keeps going.
I’ve posted pictures in my gallery.
Sunday March 14, 2010
First geocache
Betty and I finally decided to get out and see if we could find a geocache or two. We had to pick Michelle up at 1pm so at 12:30 we headed over to this cache.
It was in a park with lots and lots of Mugles around. We walked around and couldn’t find it. It was getting close to time to get Shell so we had to leave without success.
After we picked up Shell we decided we would look for one more and then go home. I knew one was near a Del Taco just down the street from us so I pulled in and located this one on my iPhone. I walked over to a pole and there it was sitting in a little niche on the pole. Success!
I think we’ll try it again next week and spend a bit more time but for our first try it quite satisfying.
I think the iPhone with one of the apps is plenty good enough to find any cache. Does anyone have a recommendation?
Wednesday March 3, 2010
Moon Pic
Here’s a picture I took with the new camera. I was quite amazed that you need a really fast shutter speed to take a picture of a full moon at full zoom on my 55-200 lens. I think this was taken at 1/1600th and probably 4.5 f-stop. I originally was taking them at slow shutter speeds and all I was getting was a bright disc and you couldn’t see the features. I like this one a lot.
Saturday January 23, 2010
New Camera
I’ve wanted to get a REAL camera for ages. The last real camera I had was a Minolta SRT101 SLR 35mm film camera. I’ve had lots of toy cameras since then with the closest to real being my Olympus C-785 Ultra Zoom. It has a 10X Optical lens and it’s got some manual control but it isn’t SLR.
I finally decided it was time so last week I bought a Nikon D5000.
It’s not quite professional grade but it’s very close. Professionals would say it’s a great starter camera but for me it’s great.
To show the power of a real SLR I took a few pics the other night. This one is taken outside at night when it was completely dark. I used the built-in flash so you can see just how dark it was. The F-stop was 3.5 and the shutter was 1/60 second.
This next one was taken at the same time except it was on a tripod and the F stop was 3.8 with a 25 second shutter speed.
You can see some lights in the shot but you would almost swear it was daylight. Look around the middle on the left side of center and you can see some trails from a car.
Here’s a pano made with photos from the new camera and Autostitch. Richard first showed me Autostitch. Pretty cool free program to make Panoramas.
I think I’ll be happy with this camera for a long time to come.
Wednesday December 23, 2009
Street View getting better
Google has finally gotten to the Rawson Rd farm. Here’s some screen shots I just got. They also have some in Cuba but none on Hill St. They do have View Rd which goes right by the house I think although I don’t remember which one was ours.
Note: Added Cuba Cheese Shop
Sunday October 11, 2009
Family Reunion
This weekend our whole family minus a couple of grandchildren got together in Tempe. This is the first time I’ve seen my brother Dale in about 38 years. We also got to meet his daughters and son. The missing people were Darin(Richard and Dianna’s son) and Jocelyn(my daughter). I’m hoping the next one will get us all together.
Here’s a picture taken Saturday morning.
In the back from left to right: Dale, Me, Dave, Mark, Brian, Robin, Karen, Richard, Daryl. In the middle it’s Betty, Heather, Donna, Jenny, Dayna, Dianna, Giselle. And the four in the front are Carsten, Camden, Grandma, and Nathan.
Here’s another pic of the grand kids with Grandma.
From left to right behind Grandma it goes Dave, Heather, Brian, Robin, Jenny, Karen, and Dayna. Devon and Derek were around but didn’t get up in time to get in the picture.
We had a great time catching up on so many years. We really hope it happens again in the not too distant future.