For new readers: welcome to my day journal — of sundry activities and rambling thoughts. There's a mixture of techie stuff and personal doings, so just read the bits you're interested in ;-]
You'll find previous Kronikles in the ARCHIVE if you want to catch up.
For interesting links which change every week, look at my Home Page for Life in NZ and Nice Ones.

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Monday, February 11, 2002

Back home safe and sound; I have been catching up with email and Daynoters pages.

I finally managed to get yesterday's post uploaded last night by cellphone, but only using the GSM data link; the GPRS refused to talk to my ISP's website server. I'll have another go later in the week, and may have to have a talk to the help desk. I suspect that this is another facet of their paranoia about being hacked; I have to get and upload email on direct connection -- they won't permit access to the POP and SMTP servers from outside. When I commented on this some time ago, they just pointed to their webmail facility and told me to use that. Basically, the GPRS is is using Vodafone as an ISP -- they've even installed their own SMTP server to send emails form the phone.

During the night, a warm front came over Wanganui and we had steady rain for most of the night. I was rather apprehensive when waking up for a trip to the toilet; but it stopped about 6 am. By the time we were ready to drop the camper top down at 9.30 am, the sun had come out and the canvas sides were reasonably dry.

We went into the shops for me to buy some clothes at my favourite menswear place: he specialises in larger sizes. I bought a couple of pairs of jeans, shorts, and a new dressy bomber-type jacket; all to take away to the UK in May. We had an early lunch in our usual stop, the Rutland Arms -- which is one of Wanganui's old hotels converted into a bar/tavern/cafe. An uneventful trip home, except for catching up with the warm front which was dumping huge amounts of rain on the Central Plateau. But we drove on through that; the rain cleared by the time I reached Lake Taupo, and we had a clear run home.

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Busy catching up with things this morning. Another muggy, drizzly day, fuelled by a dollop of tropical air and a warm front which kept things sticky all day. Joan had me doing little jobs, like cleaning the air ducts on our portable fridge before it went away into storage. We managed to get the camper open between showers, to unpack the wardrobe and get food out of the cupboards.

After lunch, we drove into town to collect our repaired bread-baker machine -- it turned out that the bearings under the spindles had dropped down and lost the connection to the mixing blades. We thpen dropped into Millennium Computers to pick up my new Epson 2450 scanner, arrived at last. I'll be running calibration tests tomorrow, and will produce a report.

We then drove over to pick up some concrete paver/bricks for Joan to put edging round the small magnolia tree in the lawn, also some pea gravel to fill in the circle. Again, we were dodging the showers but managed to get everything back home without getting wet. I had a phone request to help Delwyn, the wife of our landscaper, with a digital camera purchase; and start by coming to a Ranger Guide meeting after tea and taking some pictures so she could see the process. This we duly did, and she will be coming here later in the week for me to show her what is involved with tidying up the images and printing them.

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

A weather change today; the rain cleared and most of the day has been broken cloud with the temperatures lower and not so humid. We drove off into town to return books and tapes to the Library, and visit the supermarket for a full stock-up as there was little food left.

Delwyn, the Ranger Leader came in during the afternoon to watch me deal with the digital shots I took last night. We selected eight of them, and I did some cleaning up, cropping etc. There was a good shot of Delwyn's daughter with strands of hair hanging down over her face; so I showed her how to clone across from nearby skin to remove all trace of the hair. We printed the sheet of shots, and I chopped them up ready to put up on the Rangers' notice board.

After she left, I noticed Sissy, my internet box, was playing up. I'd had a little trouble firing her up this morning, and the mouse wasn't being recognised. Then I noticed that the red LED was off in the mouse. I powered down, changed to a PS2 ball mouse, and the box refused to boot. Power suppy totally dead. Bum. Off into town to pick up a replacement, install same, and reboot, Problem sorted; the LED mouse was back running and all was sweet.

Just as well, because tonight was Camera Club meeting night, and I had several lots of prints from the photoschool to mount on card for display. Got that done (using those handy little blue sticky spots which can be easily removed afterwards) then decided I better print some of the stuff I shot. Managed to get the A3+ with eight prints done before tea was on the table; afterwards I chopped them up and mounted them on card too.

The meeting had only a dozen or so members attending - the AGM usually puts people off. However, no-one was prepared to be President, and we're losing the Secretary Treasurer in a month. I commented that there was no real necessity to have office bearers at the moment; and most of the people there agreed to be committee members. We'll take it in turns to chair meetings on an ad-hoc basis; and have a short committee meeting before each monthly club night. Hopefully, we'll get some more members coming into the club this year; four of our best members have moved away to other towns to take up new jobs. This is a symptom of the day and age: people are juggling too many things and their time gets spread over too many activities. And not everyone interested is prepared to devote enough time to photography. We finished with a very interesting talk from a guy who had spent a couple of months in the Antarctic. He had a lovely set of slides and a very varied range of subjects.

Talepiece: This story in the NZ Herald today tells about the reaction of a Telecom customer whose bill called him an "arrogant bastard".

Thursday, February 14, 2002

Comment about my talepiece above:

Oh, how I've wanted to do that to certain mouthy, self-important customers of mine. These are the types that complain about not getting the service they're paying for - when they're actually 6 months in arrears.

Here's a follow-up link from more frustrated Telecom customers.

A morning spent shuffling paper in the office, while Joan went off with Joanna to find some more tiles for Joanna's bathroom. The high winds are still with us -- which means lots more grief down on the coast. In fact, that's just what is happening; there is a log carrier aground on the East Coast at Gisborne, and salvage attempts are on hold until the winds and seas abate.

Joan was busy in the garden for most of the afternoon; at one stage I went out to screw a piece of trellis on the side of the house for a burgeoning rose. When I went back inside, the UPS upstairs was shrieking; sure enough, the power was right out. Doubtless a tree branch had taken out some power wires; a high percentage of our streets have overhead power wiring, although newer ones like ours are all underground. It costs heaps to convert from poles to underground, so they tend to dodge the issue.

Outside after tea to do the lawn edges with the string trimmer, then mow the lank grass. It's got very long because of all the rain and hot sun, and shows no sign of stopping.

Friday, February 15, 2002

I spent a little time this morning doing comparison tests with the Epson 2450 scanner and the Nikon 35mm scanner LS1000. The Nikon is rather elderly now, and I was not surprised to find that scans of 35mm slides off the Epson at 2400 ppi were just as sharp as those from the Nikon. I next tried a strip of 35mm colour negatives; scanned one at 2400 ppi and compared the result with that obtained by scanning the print at 300 ppi. I was interested to find that the colour reversal and elimination of the red masking was just about perfect. The comparison sharpness was about the same -- but there was far more detail to be seen in the negative scan; what I would expect.

Lastly, I dug out a monochrome 6 x 7 cm negative, scanned it at 600 and 1200 ppi, and was very pleased with the results. The 1200 ppi scan was cropped a bit, enlarged to A4 and printed; the result was very similar to the original darkroom-produced print. I am now satisfied that the 2450 will deliver the goods, and I intend to trawl through my archives looking for likely stuff to print. I should also get out my old Mamiya C3 6 x 6 roll camera and try a film. I've still got tanks for processing.

Lesley and Vince from Wanganui arrived at 4.30 pm to stay overnight; we also had Joanna, Don and the family over for a meal together. Lots of talking, and catching up with news.

Saturday, February 16, 2002

A full-on day today. Lesley and Vince departed about 9.15 am; we got through the morning chores quickly, then Russell and Eric from the Camera Club phoned up to tell me they were coming over to sort out details for tomorrow's Art in the Park.

We have decided to take a spot in this display, mainly to try and get some interest from potential members. I sorted through a pile of my prints for some likely ones; then Peter, our ex-president dropped in to borrow a 24mm wide angle lens for an OM1 he had been lent. He promptly went back home for some prints, too. We settled on the details of the display, and I started doing some posters for the display. Got them printed and laminated; then I did some necessary alterations to our brochure and printed the master pages. I then photocopied off 100 sheets and gave half to Russell to fold at home.

After lunch, my friend Neville and his elderly mother came to visit; I carried on with my posters and things while we talked computers, and they left at 5 pm. Joan wasn't feeling up to cooking, so we drove into town to KFC and had some chicken. I spent some of the evening folding the brochures, then daughter Sue reported in from her quick overseas trip. We talked for about 45 minutes (mainly to keep her awake a bit longer), and I'm calling it an early night. More on the Art in the Park tomorrow.

Sunday, February 17, 2002

Breakfasted, loaded the car, and was down at the Government Gardens by 9.45 am. The others had already erected a canvas gazebo shelter, and carried out our display boards from the storage. We had the prints pinned up in place by 10 am, which was just as well, because the people were already thronging around to look. We had a steady stream for the rest of the day; the brochures I had photocopied were in demand -- only 25 left out of 100. And the 15 copies of the club newsletter went in the first hour. I drove home at 11.45 am and photocopied off another 30 newsletters. We had lunch, then Joan came back with me for the rest of the afternoon. The crowd suddenly dwindled about 3.45 pm, so we got packed up and were back home by 4.30 pm.

After tea, Russell came over with Zip disk containing images for the PSNZ Digital Image Competition. I transferred them to Milly and burned off 4 CDRom copies, three to be sent to the judges.