When good enough is good enough – when it’s my trusty Asus X54C-BBK7 laptop.

A few days back I ranted on about our obsession with needing to update to the latest technology all the time and how Crapple treated us badly with regards to my daughter’s iPhone 5c. Well, here’s another story to balance it out.

I bought my laptop a few years back and, like all Windoze systems it’s had a few (solvable) problems over the years and is now getting a bit slow, despite the ”amendments” I have made to it (upped the RAM to the max 8GB, and replaced the DVD drive with a 1TB HDD second disk). I do a huge amount of image processing in GIMP and other CPU-hogging software and I was thinking it’s about time that I replaced it, even though it goes against the grain of my psyche to get rid of something that still works.

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I then wondered how long I had had this little workhorse so I went through my records and was stunned to see that I bought it July 2012 as a refurbished model from Groupon for the princely sum of $299 with free shipping! I had forgotten this, a sign of my impending dotage, I guess.

When I consider the artwork that I have created and sold with this laptop over the last 4 years it surely doesn’t owe me anything at all. Even adding the cost of my upgrades brings it up to about $450 total spend.

It truly amazes me that people doing similar work to me wring their hands and fret about how they are going to pay the $2000-$4000 on computer systems (or double that for a Mac) they “need” for their work when they can often do so with their existing equipment. Sometimes I think people just need to be honest and say they want something because they “want” it, rather than trying to justify a spurious “need” for it.

So, I sat back and thought, no, I am not going to replace it but instead I will pull out the original 320GB HDD with a new 480GB SSD, which I can get on Amazon for about $120 and see how it goes.

If I go quiet for a few days you can assume I may have been wrong…!

~Richard

August 18, 2016 2

The Mermaid

Those that say mermaids don’t exist are simply not looking in the right places. Next time you are at the shore take some time to look…

~Richard

August 8, 2016 2

Home Grown

The old saying, “it’s so nice to go traveling but it’s so much nicer to come home” sprung to mind this morning, as I was wandering the yard after 12 days away. It was great to escape the daily routine, visiting new places and doing different things without thinking too much about the usual domestic chores to keep the house running.

When we returned the grass had grown significantly so my first task was to get out the mower, but before I did so I thought I’d walk around and I was glad I did. The warm, wet weather recently in Pennsylvania, along with the lack of two mowing cycles, had allowed some great mushrooms to flourish. I love mushrooms, although I don’t know much about them, so I took a few shots and then decided to leave a large area of the yard uncut for a few more days at least so they could finish doing their fungi activities.

Oh, and if anyone can identify any of these beauties I would be grateful.

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160807_Mushroom5

~Richard

August 7, 2016 6

52 Week Challenge: Week 29

WEEK 29: Landscape: Waterscape – Ocean, lake, river, pond, or puddle. Make water the primary subject of this landscape.

I am still using my recent trip to New England to play catch up with the dogwood 52 week challenge. For this one I popped up to the top of Scargo Tower in Dennis, Massachusetts and stitched 5 images together to get a panorama of Lake Scargo, one of the deepest lakes in Cape Cod.

Legend has it that the lake was created by a Native American princess of the same name in order to keep fish that been given to her by a suitor from another tribe. He gave her the fish in a gourd and said he would return but the water dried up so they needed a new home. In one version the lake is filled with Scargo’s tears and in another she drowns in the lake.

Either way the vaguely fish-shaped lake was blessed to be always well stocked for good fishing, although not being a fisherman I cannot verify this!

160802_52WK29_Water ~Richard

August 2, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 28

WEEK 28: Portrait: Family – Whether it’s the family you are born with or the one you choose, show the world what family is to you.

This was always going to be a difficult portrait given my family’s general dislike of being photographed. However, our recent trip to New England afforded me a genuine opportunity for the dreaded “family portrait.” I ran off a quick set of shots but I love the informal nature of the very first one I took, outside The Verb hotel, as we were planning to leave.

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~Richard

July 30, 2016 0

It’s Wicked Good Fun

We were walking through Boston’s Chinatown district this afternoon and saw this happy group of locals playing a very animated card game near the paifang (gate). As it says on the back of one of the player’s shirts – it’s wicked good fun!

~Richard

July 29, 2016 2

52 Week Challenge: Week 20

WEEK 20: Landscape: Nightowl – A tripod is going to be handy this week… time to shoot a night landscape. Look for some light for the scene! Car lights, city lights, or maybe just moonlight.

I finally got around to this challenge several weeks later than I had planned and, as is often the case, it was a spur of the moment shoot last night. We were staying in the heart of the historic town of Salem, Massachusetts and opposite the hotel was a wonderful outdoor sculpture made of beech twigs called “Stickwork” by Patrick Dougherty. This is a spectacular organic artwork in the form of a set of two storey high “houses”. They are very eerie looking, and seem to be wailing at the world, in my opinion; a fitting comment on their location in the heart of the infamous witch trials of 1692. I took several photographs but it was when we were on a walking night tour of the city that I thought this would make an interesting “nightowl” (or even night howl) image.

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~Richard

July 28, 2016 0

In flight capture

On a recent road trip to New England we stopped off at New Haven, Connecticut and stretched our legs at a small Nature Reserve. The early evening light was wonderful and we were fortunate to see one adult egret and a couple of young ones too. I was very lucky to get a single shot of the adult as it took off and flew low over the marshland. A very elegant bird and I am pleased with the clarity of this shot hastily taken at full zoom.

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~Richard

July 27, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 27

WEEK 27: Artistic: Blue – You were inspired by the fiery red earlier, now be inspired by calming blue.

Any fans of Black Adder may recall the famous alchemy scene in which Lord Percy creates his vision or “gold” but is soon brought down to Earth by Black Adder. Well, fellow readers, as tribute I present to you a “’nugget’ of finest blue.” 🙂

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~Richard

July 24, 2016 0

Then and Now: Tower Bridge and The Tower of London

As I am wont to do, I was browsing the Library Of Congress’ collection of old photographs yesterday when I stumbled across a great panoramic image of Tower Bridge and The Tower of London taken from Southwark in 1909. As the image is public domain I downloaded the TIFF file and spend a few hours in GIMP restoring this great shot. The great thing about restoring and retouching is that I go over the whole image “pixel-peeping” and so see lots of details such as the man in the skiff, people promenading along the north bank near Traitor’s Gate and the old signs on the warehouses at St. Katharine’s Docks, to name a few.

I thought it might be interesting to see a more contemporary view. As I cannot get to London from Pennsylvania that easily I used Google street view to come to my rescue with a fairly similar angle, just up from where HMS Belfast is berthed.

Unsurprisingly, much of this area has changed over the last century with the working dockyards for loading and unloading barges long gone as the road network and container ships took over transporting goods, and the warehouses at St. Katharine’s Docks were bombed out during the Blitz, but the two main London icons live on, and I am sure the original photographer would have marveled at the sight of Canary Wharf in the distance.

~Richard

July 19, 2016 3

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Category: photography

When good enough is good enough – when it’s my trusty Asus X54C-BBK7 laptop.

The Mermaid

Home Grown

52 Week Challenge: Week 29

52 Week Challenge: Week 28

It’s Wicked Good Fun

52 Week Challenge: Week 20

In flight capture

52 Week Challenge: Week 27

Then and Now: Tower Bridge and The Tower of London

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