BruceHartman.net

I have a ton of trees on my yard… a couple of which are in bad shape that really need to be taken down. David had talked about helping me do it myself, but frankly, cutting down trees myself, especially big ugly trees, just isn’t something I’m up for.

I just had a guy come out and look at what I need done. All told, there are 14 trees that are going away. We dickered back and forth over the price a bit, and when all was said and done I talked him down by 25%. I think it helped that I’m not having them do any stump grinding… just cut them as close to the ground as possible and take them away.

And it will all be done by Tuesday. I’ll post before and after pictures when it’s finished.

I’ve finally posted all of my Alien Bees Light Gear for sale… we’ll, Dawn posted it for me, but it’s up. You have to be a member, but it’s listed here.

1 B400 Strobe, with cases
2 B800 Strobe, with cases
1 Honey Comb Grid

$685 + Shipping

If I can’t make a deal on the ILP Board, I’ll list it all on EBay beginning Friday.

I had originally planned to take the whole of last week off, but some changes at the office recently made me think better of taking off so much time. Instead I took of Thursday and Friday, which made for a great five day mini vacation. These past four days have been a 9.5 on a ten point scale.

Thursday I managed to go back to sleep for a good part of the morning after feeding the cat… this is unusual in itself since I normally wake at 6:00 and rarely ever go back to sleep (it feels like wasting the day). But Thursday it worked out that I crashed on the couch and didn’t wake up until 10. I called a friend at the office and gloated. I’m such a bastard. After making sure all was cool at work, I vacuumed the house, cleaned the kitchen, and hit the grocery store for some food. I think I took a nap in the afternoon too, but I can’t remember. Most of the afternoon was spent finishing up the paint job on the DIY Beauty Dish project from a couple weeks ago.

Friday I got a call around 9AM that the power had gone out at the office and that my office was beeping. I walked Alicia through shutting down all the servers (yes, I know it’s possible to set the machines to do it themselves when the UPS’s kick in). I worked on the beauty dish a bit more and then began researching more DIY photography gear projects.

I stumbled across a few references to some home-built battery packs for powering flashes, but I couldn’t find any really clear instructions. After a few hours of hunting, I decided I had found enough info and started working up a plan.

I also made some Strawberry Granita Friday afternoon for Saturday’s desert with Ginny. It turned out amazing. Maybe a bit more clumpy than I would have liked, but still awesome (there’s still some in the freezer that I’m going enjoy this afternoon). The recipe is super simple: a bunch of strawberries (a pound or so), some lemon juice (I used a few tablespoons), 3/4 of a cup or so of Splenda, and about a cup of water. Run this through the food processor until it’s smooth and then pour into a baking pan. I used a glass baking dish. Freeze for an hour or so and scrape the granita with a fork to make it into a flaky snow-conish sort of stuff. Repeat periodically (every 45 minutes to an hour) until the whole batch is flaked up. That’s it… super simple and very, very delicious. I bet raspberries would be delicious as well.

Saturday I had some running to do… I made a trip to Harbor Freight, Ollie’s Bargain Warehouse (a bust), Home Depot, Kroger, and then back home to vacuum again before Ginny showed up for dinner. I ended up making Teriyaki Rib Eyes with Green Beans, bacon and Parmesan cheese. It all worked very well together. We watched Gone Baby Gone and enjoyed it mostly with a few gripes about the story. The script could have been tighter and the editing could have been better. Affleck’s directing was good though… I’d rate it a 6 out of 10.

Sunday I drove up to Hanover for a haircut. Jane did a great job. She left the top slightly longer than she normal which I’ll ask her to keep doing. We hung out for a while and chatted with her husband, Stuart. It was more time than I wanted spend on a haircut (an hour round trip, and two hours at Jane’s), but it was very, very necessary. I looked like a dirty hippie.

I knocked out a couple mini projects, including a nice all purpose flash mount for attaching to posts or trees. I’ll do a step by step write up on it shortly along with write ups on all the other photo gear projects I’m working on.

This morning I woke up with a ridiculous headache, and after napping on the couch a bit while the Advil kicked in, I installed the XIR Xbox remote hack. It went in without any serious complications. I did the wires wrong for the first attempt, but the second try got everything right. Now, instead of getting off the bed to turn on the Xbox in the bedroom, I can turn it on with a remote. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I disagree… laziness is the true mother. Not only am I a bastard, apparently I’m also a lazy bastard.

I ordered a set of radio flash triggers on ebay today, I’ve spent the rest of the afternoon so far straightening my office. I’m thinking of cooking some monster hamburgers on the grill and sitting out on the deck to soak up some of the awesome sun that’s shining today. I’m not excited about going back to work tomorrow, but I’m not dreading it.

*****

To all the veterans and active duty members of the US Military who’ve committed their lives to maintaining our freedom, I sincerely thank you.

So, the Beauty Dish. Structurally, it’s a pretty simple project. Cutting the holes takes patience, but liberal use of a Dremel tool will allow you to open up things up without over doing it. The hardest part is painting the thing. My first attempt at the white produced a bunch of runs. I sanded most of the problem areas down with a sanding block and crossed my fingers that I could fix things. Six or seven lighter coats later and the runs are still visible, but only if you look really closely.

The black outside was much easier, thanks to what I learned from the white paint. If it matters, I did the white in order to make masking for the black easier. There’s a bead that runs along the edge of this particular planter dish and I used it as a natural border. I’ll probably try to do another of these and spend more time on the paint.

Speaking of paint, my Lowe’s didn’t have Krylon Fusion, so I picked up the Valspar Plastic Spray paint they had on the shelf. Problem one: the black and white cans were only available in a gloss. I think the final result here would be best achieved by using a flat paint. Problem two: the buttons on the Valspar cans are incredibly difficult to push (which probably contributed to the poor technique and resultant runs). Next time around I’ll use the Krylon brand paint and lay down many, many light coats.

The down spout adapter I found for the mount is aluminum, sort of wedge shaped, and slightly bigger than I needed. I spent a day or so contemplating how to work with the what I had and the final mods ended up being pretty nice, I think. I used some sheet foam to build a collar for the flash head to slide into, and then I used to hot glue to fill in between the inside of the aluminum adapter and the outside of the foam. The result makes the mounting hole nice and tight with a little bit of grip action around the flash which helps. I only wish I had black foam instead of blue.

The reflector inside the cd cake box will require some revision to full maximize the flash. Most people are using a convex spot mirror, but I didn’t think I’d easily find one to take full advantage of the 4 1/2″ inches available. I did find a nice plastic dome in the way of a “dummy” surveillance camera rig from Harbor Freight which fits really well. The problem here is in producing a reflective enough surface. I started by painting the inside of the dome, but the paint I used wasn’t metallic enough. I then used aluminum foil outside the dome, but the wrinkles in the foil diffused the light too much. For the immediate future, the foil will have to work, but I want to come up with a better means of redirecting the light from the flash. A conical sort of mirror would probably be the ultimate solution, but I don’t expect I’ll easily find something like that either. I may just make my own pyramid-mirror, which could be the next best thing.

The project took longer than I expected thanks to the paint. Because of the runs, I needed to let the paint cure until it was hard enough to sand. It could have gone a few more days I think. Right now, it needs to sit for a couple days for the most recent applications of paint to cure completely. Overall, I’m really pleased with the final result.

The next projects are going to be various kinds of flash mounts… I have an idea to use an L-bracket and velcro for one, and then another version using a spring clamp. I also need to decide one way or the other on making my own reflectors or just buying some before the wedding. As you can tell, I’m in wedding prep mode, even though it’s still 130 days away yet.

I’ve been bursting to post about this prior to now, but since I bought one of these and had it shipped to my bro, David, as a surprise gift, I couldn’t very well crow about how cool this is without him possibly seeing it and ordering one for himself. So, I’ve been sitting on this nugget of awesome for a couple weeks while the horse made its way from the United Kingdom across the pond to the US of A. Anyway, he received it this afternoon (thus this post) and is tickled by it immensely.

David’s into all sorts of automata, and seems to especially enjoy the paper-craft sorts that he can build himself. Upon seeing this kit, and the more than reasonable price of about $20 delivered, I had to get one for him.

Here’s a vid of the kit in action:

And to put David over the edge, the pièce de résistance, the automaton in 3D:

I’ll be curious to see the real thing in action myself.