Kristopher's Blog

The first day on the island of Kauai, we rented a car.  We drove up to see Waimea Canyon first.  Later in the day, we sought out a couple of waterfalls.  Here are three albums from that day.

Waimea Canyon

Wailua and ‘Opaeka’a Falls

There are a few things worth pointing out.  Our guide book said that this was probably one of the most spectacular views in the Pacific Ocean.  I guess we missed that one.  :)  Kauai is a very wet island.  The center of the island is touted to be one of the rainiest places on earth.  It is clear the rest of the island benefits from all of that fresh water.

I stitched together two panoramas.  The first is a panorama of what I’m calling the foothills leading up to Waimea Canyon.  It is stitched from 7 horizontal (landscape) images.

The second panorama is from the Waimea Canyon Lookout.  It is stitched from 13 vertical (portrait) images.

I know this will sound a little cliché, but the pictures really don’t do this justice.  The canyon is 10 miles long and 3000 feet deep.  It is truly an amazing site to be seen.

I’m sure Marie will also be blogging about this soon.

Or is it Octopi?  I don’t know.

When we were in Kona (big island) we had to tender to shore since there’s no place for a cruise ship to dock.  We spent the first half of the day with Captain Zodiac.  The snorkeling was very cool.  Anyway here’s the album for that day.

Can you find the octopus in this picture?

Marie’s post is here.

This album is from Volcanoes National Park on the “big island” of Hawaii.  Marie has also posted her description of the day.

Here’s an album full of pictures from the first time we snorkeled.  Marie and I were sharing her camera for this.  We were off the coast of Maui at the Molokini Crater and also at a place they called “Turtle Town” (for obvious reasons).

Marie’s blog has a much longer description of the day… and also video.

As promised here are some more albums from our trip to Hawaii.  Our cruise’s first stop was the island of Maui.  We rented a car and drove the road to Hana.  I really enjoyed the drive with the tight turns, one-lane bridges and amazing views.  I could tell Marie didn’t like the one-lane bridges or the tight turns.  She was all about the scenery though.  I’m sure she will have a lot more to say about it on her blog.

Ho’okipa Beach

Miscellaneous Road to Hana

Garden of Eden

Wai’anapanapa State Park

Marie and I recently took a cruise around some of the islands of Hawaii.  Marie is blogging about it in pretty great detail.  I probably won’t go into as much depth here, but I will be posting a lot of pictures.  We’re going to try to do a little bit at a time until we get everything up.  Be patient.  So far we have pictures (and posts) up about Pearl Harbor…

…and also the cruise ship we were on.

I bought a new camera this fall.  On this trip I shot everything in Nikon’s raw format.  I have over a thousand images from Hawaii I need to sort through.  This poses a bit of a problem for me.  I haven’t yet mastered working with raw images.  I tend to spend a lot of time working with each image individually (using UFRaw).  I don’t feel confident enough yet to do any batch processing, and I also don’t think I have the input color profiles figured out yet.   I just don’t seem to be consistent with what I create.   I do want to share them with everybody though.  So I figured out a way to cheat.

I learned that Nikon’s raw files contain a full size preview image (basic quality jpeg) .  The preview image is available in the raw file even if you’re not shooting in RAW+JPEG mode.  This image is “exposed” the same way the camera would have exposed the image if it wasn’t saving the data in a raw format.  Using Exiv2, I can extract this preview image.  Once extracted I can copy the EXIF metadata from the raw image to the jpeg image.  This is an important step as it copies the orientation field which is used by software to auto-rotate the image based on how the camera was oriented.

These preview jpegs might not be that great for working with the image, but they seem to work well for posting to the web.  I can very quickly extract the preview images from all of my raw files with a script and post the interesting shots to the web without having to manipulate each photo.   Since I’m shooting in raw, however, I still have full control over the exposure of the image if I need or want to manipulate anything later.

Of course this would all be easier if I was shooting RAW+JPEG, but I feel the jpeg would be a bit redundant in that case.

I had almost the entire load of laundry moved to the dryer tonight when the washing machine did that click… you know… the one it does before it starts the rinse cycle.

In my last post, I did a lot of Microsoft bashing.   In this post, I’m going to explain something that Microsoft is doing right… or… at least mostly right.

I hate anti-virus software.  To me it indicates that there’s something wrong with the operating system.   You shouldn’t need to pay a different software vendor money to get protection for something that shouldn’t be a threat in the first place.   There is also a clear conflict of interest at hand.  The company that benefits the most from a widespread virus is the very company that we are paying to protect us from the virus.

On top of all of that, anti-virus software can cause programs to load less quickly.  It uses processing power and memory that most of us would rather not give up.

If anti-virus software is truly necessary, shouldn’t it be something that everybody is running?  Shouldn’t it be something that the OS vendor provides free of charge?

It seems like Microsoft is doing just that.  They have recently released Security Essentials.  This is free anti-virus software from Microsoft.  It runs on XP, Vista and Windows 7.  The only requirement is that you have a genuine (not pirated) version of Windows.

Microsoft is obviously doing something good here.  I’m sure they feel that if everybody was running this tool malicious software would spread less quickly on their operating systems.

I just loaded this on my netbook today.  (I finally got one… and it’s red.)  If it does what it is supposed to do and also stays out of my way, I might finally have a tool to recommend to all of the Mr. McClickys out there.   And we all know a few Mr. McClickys.  

I’m shopping for a netbook.  For those who don’t know what a netbook is (Mom), it’s an ultra portable, ultra cheap laptop.  Most cost a little more than $300 and are about half the size of a regular laptop.  These aren’t computers that you’re going to use 8 hours a day.  They’re computers you’re going to travel with… or have on your night stand… or lost between the seat cushions on the couch.  They’re portable internet devices that you can… get this… actually use.   (Some of us still haven’t learned how to scribble or thumb on virtual keyboards.)

These aren’t hard to find.  Unless you’re looking for something odd like a matte screen  (that’s what I want), they’re everywhere.  All the stores sell them now.

When these first arrived on the market, Microsoft had a problem.  These ultra cheap laptops couldn’t run Vista (surprised?).  So Microsoft extended it’s support of Windows XP so it could sell it on these little laptops.   And since Microsoft’s main competition was FREE, it sold XP on netbooks for next to nothing.

Everybody soon forgot about the open alternatives and started gobbling up these little XP powered netbooks.  The evil empire was again safe.

Enter Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest operating system.

Evidently Microsoft has made some performance improvements to it’s OS and it now runs on the tiny little computers.  One would think this would be great news… but it isn’t.  Microsoft is again faced with a problem if they want to continue to be a player in the netbook space (and they do).  Their new OS is priced almost as much as a netbook itself.  If they reduce the price of Windows 7 so it can be the OS of choice on a netbook, they’ll be giving away what they charge a lot more for on more expensive machines.

So instead they created Windows 7 Starter for netbooks and turned it into some sort of crippleware.  Windows 7 Starter does not have all of the features of regular Windows 7.  For example, only 2GB of system memory can be accessed, it’s 32 bit only, you cannot use Windows Aero… or Windows Media Player… or even change your desktop background or sounds.  Essentially what you have is an advertisement for a $75 upgrade.  And this advertisement isn’t even free.  It considerably increases the price of a netbook compared to the XP versions.

This doesn’t sound like they’re really supporting this new platform.  The whole point of a netbook is to be ultra cheap and ultra portable.  I’m certainly not going to buy a netbook with Windows 7 Starter knowing it will cost me an extra $75 to use my own pictures as a desktop background.  That’s just silly.  Thankfully Microsoft didn’t follow through with their original plan to only allow 3 applications running at any given time on Windows 7 Starter.  That would have been an absolute dealbreaker.

So now I’m faced with a choice of the old Windows XP or putting together some sort of Linux machine.  The problem is… there is a WAF that I need to worry about.  I won’t be the only one wanting to use this little computer.

I wonder if Apple will ever release an affordable netbook… without it being crippled.

Marie got me a 7 foot inflatable rocket for my birthday.  We finally had an opportunity to launch it on Sunday.  Ron, Liz, Marie and I took turns squeezing the launch ball.  The rocket is powered by water and air.  It takes a lot of pumping before the rocket is ready to be launched.

It was the best 20 bucks we’ve spent in a long time. 

Here are a few photos…

… and a few videos.