Solstice Lunar Eclipse
On December 21st 2010 a Solstice Lunar Eclipse occurred at 1:40am that was visible to the USA. This was a quite rare event. According to NASA a lunar eclipse occurred on the same date as the winter solstice only once before, in 1638. Thankfully we will not have to wait another 372 years to see the next winter solstice lunar eclipse which will occur on December 21, 2094.
I have tried before to photograph various eclipses without much success. Being at night in the winter in Nebraska it can frequently be cloudy or just too cold to go out at 2am to take a few photographs. This morning was different. It was reliantly warm, 28F with no wind and clear. Before going to bed I set my alarm to get up and snap a few photos. I am lucky because my street has very few street lamps and my neighbor's Christmas lights were off by the time the eclipse was occurring, because of this I sat right out side my front door to take the photographs below.
To capture these photos I used my Canon 7D in manual mode, Sigma 70-200 F 2.8, Manfrotto tripod, 3rd party remote. I turned off automatic focus because I was trying to focus on such a small area of the sky. I used Live view to frame the shot because it was easier to see at this angle and I was able to magnify the image 10x to get the focus tack sharp. This really worked well with a combination of apertures, shutter speeds and low ISO settings. Enjoy my photos below.
Visit my Flickr Stream for more of my photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/
If you want to know more about this eclipse NASA has a great webpage about it: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/17dec_solsticeeclipse/
Other photos from around the world can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/21/lunar-eclipse-2010-photos_n_799618.html#212892
Rick’s Steak Out Review – Lincoln NE
Driving by Ricks Steak Out on 70th & Ost (right beside Taco Inn) twice on my way to work each day I knew I had to stop and try it out. I recently read the Lincoln Journal Star review and decided I had to try one of the Philly Steak sandwiches. Today, the weather was great so I decided to go take a visit. I arrived at 12:35PM thinking I would miss some of the lunch crowd and was wrong. There were 8 people in line in front of me. At a normal lunch place this would not be a problem but because Rick’s Steak Out is a mobile operation his grill is small and he was only able to make 3 to 4 sandwiches at a time, so there was a considerable wait for a sandwich place. It took about 25 minutes for me to wait in line and then get my food. The wait allowed me to socialize with the other Linconites, who like me had been driving by the place every day to and from work, heard about it from coworkers (including the Prairie Life Trainer), or had saw it in the news paper and wanted to try it out.
The menu options were brief but because each sandwich is made fresh to order it was able to be customized. Diners had 2 basic options mild (bell peppers) or spicy (jalapeno peppers). Each sandwich came standard with finely chopped breakaway steaks, sausage, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, Swiss cheese, and secret seasoning on a large hoagie bun. I ordered a mild 12” with everything on it.
The 12 inch sandwich I ordered was pretty big. It came wrapped in aluminum foil and I had it cut in ½ so I could save some for a future meal. That was a good idea because with the included chips 6 inches was all I needed.
So how did it taste? The taste was good. Lincoln does not have a good Philly steak sandwich, from a local place that I know of. The super finely chopped steak was perfect. It did not have the fat or gristle that cheaper cuts of meat had. It was also cooked so the edges were slightly crispy and this was perfect. I was not expecting sausage in the mix but it was really good. It was similar a chopped up bratwurst type of meat. The smoky meat added to the flavor complexity of the sandwich. The peppers were good, I think next time I would try the hotter sandwich because the mild was mild. It was a messy thing to eat and I wish I would of saw some napkins to use, but you have to expect this with a large Philly steak sandwich.
Price:
7” Phillies are $6.50
12” Phillies are $10.50
Buffalo Wings are 15 for $8.50 ( I did not try these but according to the newspaper review they are worth your time and money)
The Philly sandwiches include a small bag of chips as well.
Cans of pop or bottles of water are $0.50 each
I would rate the value as above fair. The sandwiches were pretty big and very fresh.
Atmosphere: Rick’s has some things going for it right now. The weather is beautiful this fall so far and a 100% outdoor place works well, but being at the edge of a parking lot that borders one of the busiest streets in the city it can get a bit noisy. Add to this the generator running, and this is not the place I would take a girl on a romantic first date. Rick does have a table setup so you can sit and eat if you want to. I did today so I could sit out in the great weather and that made everything else irrelevant.
Overall Impression: Rick’s Steak Out makes a really good Philly steak sandwich. I can’t think of a better one in town. The biggest complaint I have is how long it took to get my food. Some of the people in line behind me had to leave because they could not wait so long. If Rick’s Steak Out wants to capture the work lunch crowd his speed has to improve. Another thing that will be interesting to watch is what happens when winter gets here. Waiting in line is not something that the cook or customers will want to do. I hope Rick’s figures out a way to make it all work because he has one hell of a Philly sandwich.
Hours of operation are Monday to Saturday 11am to 6pm, closed on Sunday. Delivery is available, just call 402-601-8133
Lincoln Zombie Walk 2010
The Lincoln Zombie walk was this past weekend on 8-28-2010. This year was bigger than ever as over 1200 Zombies participated in taking over downtown Lincoln. The event was moved to be earlier in the month this year and it was a great success. The weather was fantastic with highs in the mid 80's compared to last year when I remember wearing my winter coat and gloves. The time was also moved to a little earlier which made photography much more enjoyable. The zombies were suppose to do the Thriller dance at the Union but at the last minute decided not to for an unknown reason. In the end everyone gathered outside of Pershing Center for a street dance. I met several Lincoln Flickr and Twitter people for a Flickr Walk and Tweetup. It was great fun. See the photos below.
See more photos on Flickr Page http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157624728841511/detail/
Manual Lens Portrates on a Canon DSLR
I have gotten very interested (With the help of an influential friend) in some of the older classic manual lenses, so I now have a SMC Pentax 55mm F2 Type K in Pentax mount and a Jupiter 9 85mm F1.8 M42 that I have been mounting on my 7D and I wanted to try them out so I went out with a friend and had some fun around town. The 85mm is hard to focus because it has such a small DOF and its goes through 2 converters to mount on my camera so its no perfectly tight. The lens is also a bit stiff, but optically its good. I need more practice. The Pentax is a great lens & I am getting the fever for more. Its very sharp and extremely mechanical. Great little lens. Thanks to my model Megan for the great job, I could not have done it without you.
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Sigma 10-20mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Canon 50mm F1.8
Canon 50mm F1.8
To see the full gallery Click http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/Megan1/
Hijinksinc – Nothing to See Here: Starcraft 2 is NOT killing graphics cards
I recently started to blog for Hijinks Inc a local technology & gadget blog. I am excited to start doing this and have several ideas of stuff to write on focusing on photograph & computer security. I hope this gives me a good reason to produce new content as well. I will be reposting articles with the permission of Hijinks Inc. Be sure to follow them on Twitter at @HijinksInc
Originially published on August 4, 2010 at Hijinks Inc
With the launch of Starcraft 2 on July 27th, 2010 people were excited to get their hands on this long awaited game. Development of the game started in 2003 and had been delayed or postponed several times due to other games Blizzard was producing at the time.
Since the launch minor issues have been growing, and today Blizzard Confirms an overheating issue. However, this story has been spun by the technology community even to the point where Slashdot picked up on it. It has been given menacing sounding titles such as “Is Starcraft II bad for your graphics card?” by ZDnet and “Is Starcraft II Killing Graphics Cards” by Slashdot. A much more appropriate title to the actual problem is one given by OverClockersClub “Starcraft 2 causing some GPU’s to Overheat”The problem is that during some of the in-between mission screens, cut screens and menu screens are not frame capped like the actual game play is. This causes the GPU to render these screens as fast as possible. Since these screens are simple and, for the most part, static, the computer has an easy time and is able to render these very quickly causing the GPU to heat up. This increased heat and power consumption exposes flaws in Starcraft II players’ computers, causing crashes, reboots, and even some claimed GPU failures.
Now, is this Blizzard’s fault? No, it’s really not. Gamers should expect games to tax their computers; this means heat. Blizzard and other game/program publishers should expect their customers’ computers are free of dust and have adequate cooling. This supposed bug in Starcraft II only exposes existing issues with the hardware of gamers computers. The same overheating issues would be exposed with any other game or program that stresses the system, and especially the GPU. A GPU with proper cooling should be able to handle 100% load for extended periods of time with no problems. Blizzard’s fix (below) is a setting users add to a configuration file to limit the frame rate in the areas of the game where there currently isn’t one. Since Starcraft II development period was so long and the public beta was so large, I would have expected this issue to have been found and fixed in the beta. This setting should have been enabled as a global setting in the game by default. For this I hold Blizzard accountable. There is no good reason that a gamer would disable vsync unless they are running benchmarks.
Blizzard support team has issued instructions for a temporary fix and says a more permanent fix is in the works.
A temporary workaround is to go to your Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt file and add these lines:
frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60
You may replace these numbers if you want to.Other good practices to fix this problem and to avoid this issue in the future are the following:
Update your graphics drivers. Graphics manufactures are constantly improving their drivers, fixing issues with new games and improving performance. ATI for example has issued a beta version of drivers 10.7 that fixes a few specific issues with StarCraft II.
Make sure your computer’s insides are clean and have adequate airflow. For a desktop PC I recommend opening up the side of the case and using compressed air to blow out all the dust. Do this at least twice a year, if not more often. Take the computer outside to do this because it creates a mess and it gets rid of the dust so the computer does not suck it up again. Doing this can easily make your computer run several degrees cooler.
If you are overclocking or are running a very high end graphics card make sure you have more than adequate cooling. During these hot summer months the ambient temperature of many homes is at its highest, causing more stress to be placed on your computer hardware. Run temperature monitoring software if you continue to have problems or want to monitor your hardware before damage occurs.
I have seen no mention of a fix on the mac platform so right now we can assume this is a PC related problem.
Lincoln, NE 4th of July Fireworks 2010
Better late than never right? The city of Lincoln's annual firework display was postponed one day due to the large amount of rain on the morning of the 4th of July. The evening of the 5th was perfect weather wise. I met up with some of the #LNK tweeps out at Oak Lake Park to watch the display. It was a nice time and I got a few good photos that I will post here. This was my first time watching the fireworks at Oak Lake Park and it had its pros and cons. The space is better for the amount of people that come, parking was fairly easy and emptied pretty quickly. However the background they shoot the fireworks against has too many lights, and is pretty industrial. In that regard Homes Lake was better, and much closer to my home. Hopefully someday they will decide to move it back to Homes Lake.
For more photos see the gallery http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/LNKFireworks2010/
Lincoln’s breath taking sunset 5/30/2010
I have a soft spot for sunsets of all types. I am not sure what it is, maybe the intense colors or cool clouds that often occur. Lincoln has a great sunset every once and a while, especially when storms are rolling in. Sunday May 30 2010 this exact thing was happening and I just happened to catch it out the corner of my eye. I grabbed the camera and went out on the deck and snapped a couple of photos. I then decided to drive to Holmes Lake. Unfortunately the lovely pink had disappeared from the sky and the clouds had rolled in more. I still got a couple of nice photos though.
More photos of the trip will be posted over the coming weeks. I am going to make a real effort to keep this blog updated. We will see how that goes.
Monkey Wrench Cycles Shop Review
Backstory: I bought a Specialized Hardrock bike 4 or 5 years ago and rode it quite a bit but stopped because the drivetrain was not working right. The bike had trouble shifting gears and staying in gear. The place I had bought it from in Lincoln got a chance to fix it twice and really did not do much but charge me to fix it.
Review: So deciding I wanted to bike again I pulled the bike out and found, it was likely (After some Google searches) that I needed a new freewheel because I could peddle put not put any power to the ground. After hearing good things about Monkey Wrench Cycles in downtown Lincoln I gave them a call. Monkey Wrench is a service oriented bike shop. While they will sell you a bike they specialize in repair of any problem, big or small. These guys know their stuff! They are racers and hard core bikers, not some college student who are their just to pay the bills. They were able to get my bike in and explained a possible estimate on the price from the problems I had described over the phone. So the next day I dropped it off and explained all the problems I had been having and was told it would be ready in 2 days.
Two days later I went to pick up the bike. The best part of the service was how they explained to me everything they did and why. Being a detail oriented person and mechanical I like to know why and how things work, so this was great. On my bike they put on the new freewheel, and then went to test drive the bike. The technician felt more vibration in the drivetrain and went on to further diagnose that my chain was way stretched. This was news to me as I had no idea chains stretch but after further explanation this is a very common problem. If you ride your bike for 30-40 minutes a couple times a week they recommend you change your chains every 3 to 4 months. Don’t worry they are cheap about $12. A stretched chain can cause your other drivetrain components to wear prematurely. After replacing the chain they adjusted my brakes. The design of my calipers is poor, and because of this a cap cracks, falls off which causes a critical spring to not function as designed. As a result most of the brakes only pull from one side cutting in ½ your stopping power and causing uneven wear. Since this is a design flaw the part is no longer made so the solution becomes modification of the part. The mounting bracket was taken off and drilled for a new cable run location. Now the brakes work great and pull from each side.
At the end of the day I am very impressed. These guys did quite a bit of work on my bike, they spent time doing great work and then checked their work by going out and putting a couple of miles on it. The bike is now better than it has ever been even brand new from the factory. The price was very reasonable too for the amount of work that was done.
If you live in Lincoln, Nebraska or surrounding areas I cannot recommend Monkey Wrench enough. A+ Local business! Check out their website http://www.monkeywrenchcycles.com/ blog http://monkeywrenchcycles.blogspot.com/ and Google customer reviews as well for their address and phone number.
Monkey Wrench Cycles LLC
1225 P Street, Lincoln, NE 68508-1429
(402) 477-4104