New Camera

I'd been noticing a decline in my photo quality from my other camera & decided that it had served me well over the last 2.5 years. From it's first scouting trip to Puerto Vallarta for our wedding in June of 2006 to our Big Sur trip to our wedding & honeymoon in February of 2007 to tubing down the river in the fall of 2007 to baseball trips in 2007 and 2008 to running the marathon with me last year to underwater fun and river rafting in South America for our anniversary in 2008 to SCUBA diving this past summer. This camera has worked tirelessly for me & was with me everyday in my purse, and it's of course attended many concerts. I'll be keeping it around as a waterproof/weatherproof camera to use underwater, but I thought it was time to upgrade my technology.

I did lots of research and debating about what sort of new camera to get. There are some new fancy models of the Olympus Shock & Waterproof line, but their picture quality is just OK and I will keep my old camera for use near/under water. I really wanted something that took great photos, was ultracompact and had a great zoom lens. I settled on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5A, which will be a big upgrade from my 3x to a 10x zoom- one of the best offered on a camera this size.



Especially after reading the very through review on Digital Photography Review and glowing reviews on Amazon. I have a dSLR if I wanted to do all the fancy manual setting and such, but I just wanted a great camera I could whip out and point-and-shot. I will be giving it a good first workout as it will be my main camera for the inauguration, because I can't bring myself to lug around my D-80 without a camera bag for 12 hours in the cold.

You can see both of my cameras here & that my Panasonic is a little longer and a little thicker. It's going to take me a while to learn all the new features, but I'm loving the super-zoom lens so far.

Being a total photography freak, I think we'll have all 3 cameras with us in DC for the inauguration. We'll take various ones on different days depending on what we are seeing, how long we'll have to carry it and what the weather looks like.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I'm meeting up with lots of friends in DC today.

Network Music Upgrade

Now that I've got my iMac all ready to go, I've decided to take the next technological step forward and get on the iTunes bandwagon. I spent much of my holiday importing all my music to iTunes and ripping all my remaining CD's into mpeg files.

On our 101 list was to upgrade & finish our entertainment system. We've survived for 3 years with a cheapo box system, but we were ready to upgrade to some real audio equipment. With some help from our friend who does home theater installations, we bought this Denon Receiver & these Polk Audio speakers and sub-woofer.

One of my Christmas presents was this fun little radio called the Squeezebox Boom which can send my entire music collection on my computer to any room in the house! It's obviously pre-programed to play some great musical tunes for *our* house ;) I've enjoyed having it in the kitchen while we cook & I'm digging all the international music channels I can stream.

We're also getting rid of Comcast Internet & dumping Dish Network to give the At&T U-Verse a try. I like the idea of being able to download movies instead of renting them & the better/cheaper HD access. Installation is this Saturday & hopefully it will go smoothly.

I debated about getting a Blu-Ray player, and I really think that the future of home entertainment is streaming downloads. However, the quality of movie is just too darn impresive to skip this. Plus, I watch so many random old movies, and I couldn't use my old player with the new receiver. The most minimal player I could get good features with was this Sony BDP-S350. We're getting everything all assembled & hooked up next Friday, so I'll report back then!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I think we'll be done with house projects after this done.

New Year, New Ride

(Happy New Years all my blog friends! This post is about a month late, but I must have forgot about it somewhere- sorry.)
Hubby's got some new wheels finally! We've been talking about getting a new car for at least a year and were planning on waiting until the end of 2008 to purchase it. I'll spare you all the details of our car shopping experience and just tell you we bought H a new Nissan Murano.

We opted for the fully loaded LS model with the nice heated leather seats, the Navigation system, dual sun roofs, and many other fun accessories.

I was hoping to get a picture of him pimping his new ride, but we've had a rather hectic schedule the last few weeks & the weather hasn't been very cooperative. It's very nice that the rear seats fold flat, and Zoe even got to ride in it once already.

I think H's favorite part is the new sound system. He's got the XM satellite radio now (with traffic on the GPS maps), but it also has a hard drive where we can download his iTunes music or save other CD's to the car itself. We're still trying to figure out all the programing and other bells & whistles, but we're loving it!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We had an awesome time partying downdown last night & are looking forward to a year that is looking like it's going to be outta this world great!

Christmas Giveaways

Among the many blogs I read, I read several on personal finance. One of my favorites, Christian Personal Finance, is having an awesome giveaway with some super prizes. So check out the blog here to see how you can win one of these great prizes!

Prizes include: 8GB iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, a few other goodies several books including one of my favorite christian authors of all time, C.S. Lewis "The Great Divorce" audio CD.

I'm making the big switch to Mac, so I'd love to win a iPod Nano!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Last day of work & then a 5 day weekend!

More Fun with Google Earth

I happened to notice that Google Earth has updated the images over my house. This is the horrible medical office behind my house & I think this photo was taken in January of 2008.

It' interesting to see where the new images are. This is just north of my neighborhood, in the subdivision where I jog through. You can see where the new images, taken in the winter, meet with the old images, taken when the trees were more green.

This is a neat map showing our drive through Joshua Tree National Park. You can see exactly where we wen through all the mountain passes.

This is just east of the park. I assume this is a compilation of several satellite images. I'm assuming it has to do with the photo processing, and not the seasons, why the desert appears so many different colors.


This giant complex is my high school from space. If you look just SW of the track you can see that they are actually installing all those portable class rooms.

And of course the shot of downtown Denver, with the state capitol on the right, the awesome park in the center, and the city hall on the left.

And just for fun, a Google Earth shot of the entire US. I think it's so fascinating to see the different geographical features, mountains, deserts, and pretty blue islands!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: It was 43 out this morning for my long run, and I can sleep in tomorrow now.

2007 Before the Blog

I'm putting the finishing touches up on the My Publisher album I am creating for our first year of wedding bliss. I have made several MP albums including Our Honeymoon, the year before we married, our Engagement Album Pics (also served as our guest book at the wedding) and of course a wedding album with photos from the entire weekend bonanza. I think it's a great way to keep track of all the digital files and something that our kids will look at in 20 or 40 years. Ackk....did I just mention kids???

Here are a few pages I put together from the early part of 2007 that will be in our book. Although MP has some great layouts and formats for various things, I created all my own layouts in Photoshop Elements 6.0. The albums themselves come in many sizes and styles. I generally go with the Classic Hardcover & always wait until I get a 50% off coupon. Above is the surprise 30th birthday party we threw for his best friend Matt.

In June, my friends came over to my mom's house and swam with their babies. I swam with a margarita. ;)

This was us in April, right after our birthday at a Rockets play-off game with H's best friends- Matt and Mark.

Per our 101 list, we wanted to stop by Sam Houston Race Park to watch the horses race. Clay Walker was supposed to perform at 9PM sharp, on the dot, but we gave up after 10 and left.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: So much better than the old albums with plastic sleeves.

Yapta Rocks

I've been waiting a few weeks to share this travel gem since the holiday's kept falling on a Travel Tuesdays! I had been looking for something to track prices on specific flights and hadn't really found any good websites. Although Orbitz and Expedia have some features, they are clumsy and a PITA. Kayak (my first place to check flights) has a nice feature that will let you save a specific search criteria (cities & dates), so you can check prices on that as often as you can remember. However, given our very strict time constraints and specific flights we usually try to grab, I wanted something that would watch exact flights I was interested in purchasing.

But- I've fallen in love with YAPTA! Above shows all the different upcoming travel plans I have and the current price for the selected flights. Red indicates a price increase since I started tracking and green signals a price drop. I am notified via email of any price decrease on of flight I am tracking.

I've already saved a few dollars when booking our tickets for our South America trip. The other feature is that it will continue to track the fare price after you have purchased a ticket and let you know of any further discounts. If the drop is significant enough, it's worth contacting the airline to see if they will reimburse you for the difference.

It's actually software that you download onto your computer & it runs in the background. It senses when you are on an airline website and automatically launches the sidebar. When you see a specific flight(s) you are interested it, simply click on the YAPTA icon next to the flight. In the above photo, you can see these particular flight has been "Tagged with Yapta" by the little icon.

GO FORTH AND FLY CHEAPER!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY:

Learn Adobe Lightroom

I just wanted to collect and share several resources that I've used to get the most out of Adobe Lightroom since I can't function without it now.

Here is a collection of video pod-casts that will walk you though various aspects and show you tutorials on selected features of LR.

The Lightroom Killer Tips website has been a great resource. They have started offering free downloadable pre-sets each week and have a great video tutorial each week.

I also follow Scott Kelby's blog, which often features great tips and tricks for photography in general. Although I've only used his Photoshop Elements 5.0 book, it looks like his Adobe Lightroom Book is getting good reviews on Amazon.

You can subscribe to the Official Lightroom Blog from Adobe to be updated of new releases and other technical news.

I also wanted to let you know that you can download a free 30-day trial version if you aren't sure how or why you would use Lightroom. I can guarantee that you will be hopelessly addicted in just a few weeks. Also, if you have children or are a student, you can most likely get a significant student discount on the program by shopping around and asking for the academic version.

Finally, a link to 28 Great Lightroom Resources from Photography Bay is essential bookmarking.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Bye-bye days of the chemical darkroom, all I need is a fast computer and digital Lightroom.

Wii Wii Wii

Oh the Wii carnage....This totally cracks me up that my husband tore out every single piece and part of the Wii before actually taking it all into the living room by the TV!

I caved in to peer-pressure and wanted to make sure my husband had something cool to talk about when he went back to work on Wednesday. My brother received his Xbox 360, but that just didn't appeal me at all. The Wii looked like so much more fun & entertainment, a game on my skill level that I could get into.

I knew they were impossible to get, so I searched on Craigslist and found one that a guy very near our house was selling. I had a clandestine rendezvous on Sunday night to pick up the goods. Of course, then I needed to hit up Target to get the extra Wii-mote and numchuck and battery recharger. Have I mentioned, that as an engineer, I'm totally amazed with these wireless controllers- their built in speakers, the gyroscopes (or whatever the heck is inside them) that can detect all sorts of motion and how they vibrate back during certain segments of the game?

He was totally surprised when he opened it on Christmas morning and we squeezed a few riotously funny hours of play in before heading to my mom's house. We hurried home again right after the gifts for another round of boxing and cow-racing. Zoe is not too sure about it yet though- she gets upset when we yell and scream and pretend like we are throwing things for her and yet there is no ball for her to chase.

It's been tons of fun so far, although we only play for short bursts. The Wii Sports and Wii Play games are fun. Boxing totally wears me out and we love being competitive in a fun, silly sort of way. We both have little Mii characters that are our players for the game. You can see that I just won a game of pong (the only game we can play one-handed while sitting on the couch drinking wine!).

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We haven't laughed so hard in a long time!

LA INTERCHANGES

More of my Google Earth obsession. ;) After traveling under a maze of freeway construction, I did some checking out the state of local roads near me, and then decided to check out some other amazing roads. Above is the crazy spaghetti freeway near the LAX Airport- the GPS Neverlost is REQUIRED anytime I traverse those roads.

I'm just fascinated that you can see all these runways, and this gives you an idea how close you are to the Pacific Ocean when you take off. It always makes for spectacular take-off's over the water when Leaving LA.

The airport is a monster! Check out all those terminals, with all those planes. Try not to think about all the angry passengers or you may upset yourself. Terminal 6 is my favorite; it's home of Continental and never has a crowd.

Check out the newest thing I've seen on Google Earth. It's called Panoramio and it's showing you the restaurant at LAX, which was under construction when I was there. If you are doing some earth-surfing and notice a little camera icon, you can click on it and get a ground view. Individual users can submit, through geo tagging, their own photos. Pretty cool stuff!

My latest favorite blog post from Google Sightseeing: Check out this Sightseeing Safari of live animals in Africa they caught on the satellite. Freaking amazing!!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We're going to do Christmas for a very needy family this afternoon and I can't wait to share some JOY!

I'M OFFICIALLY A CRACK-HEAD

Last month, I mentioned that my old cell phone was nearing retirement. After much searching and a trip to the AT&T store, I gave into popular pressure and bought a Crackberry. As much as I lusted after the iPhone, I knew I would break it within days. I wanted something small, rugged and with a large screen for web browsing.

This phone is TINY & fits perfectly in my pocket or purse. It doesn't have a full QWERTY keyboard like many other Blackberry phones, but I do limited text sending so that was I great trade-off in my mind. It's really been fabulous the past few days on the road & not coming home to 496,303 messages I needed to read or check.

I've saved tons of time reading and/or deleting lots of blog feeds while I'm on the road. Some of my other favorite websites & Yahoo mail are viewable, but not fantastic. So far I am mostly thrilled with the phone. I wish I could turn the annoying green flashing light off. I miss the multiple alarms I could set on my old phone, and I haven't figured out how to give everybody their own ringtone yet.

Thought I'd throw in a little action shot of the Crackberry on the plane with me in Louisiana.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: It's almost the weekend!

FIXING FALLING BUILDINGS

One of the interesting mini-lessons in Scott Kelby's book on Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 is the tutorial on how to correct the lens distortion that occurs when photographing tall buildings. Since I'd taken quite a few shots with falling buildings in downtown Houston, I thought I'd see if I could fix them.

The book offered great tips, and was easy to figure out- even for somebody who hasn't played around much with PSE. I think the buildings look much better now.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I can't wait to play with the panorama features on the new PSE 6.0