Denise Goldberg's blog

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Talk to me!

I have a guestbook in my photo galleries, and a guestbook in each of my biking and hiking journals, but I haven't had one for my blog. I could turn on the comments feature, but then comments would be scattered through the entire blog. That makes a certain amount of sense since you probably want to comment on the blog entry as opposed to on the entire blog. The problem I see with that is that I'd have to wander through all of the blog entries to find all of the comments. That doesn't really work for me.

I've decided to try something. I've added an entry in my blog sidebar titled Talk to me, I'm listening. Click that, and you'll be taken to a guestbook for my blog.

So please - talk to me! I'd love to hear your comments, and yes, I am listening.

Iris fascination

I've been having a love affair with these flowers for as long as I can remember. So many different varieties, so much beauty...



Friday, May 30, 2008

Trapped?

Road construction can be good, right?

The road that forms the primary egress from my house is under construction. I can't argue with the need for a big fix there, but yes, this construction period could prove to be somewhat annoying. I came home tonight to find that the usual 4-lane with additional turning lanes chunk of road has been lined with barrels and changed into a winding 2-lane road. That was to be expected. After all, a road can't be torn up and replaced without disrupting traffic, can it?

The surprise for me was that left turns are prohibited. Yikes. I drove at least two miles (to get back home again) after I passed the turn I needed to take in order to get home. And I can't turn left out of here either. Ah, but (hopefully) I can cut through the college campus next door when I need to turn left from home.

I have a copy of the construction schedule, and while there will be work going on throughout the summer, it looks like "rip up and replace the road" portion of the work will be completed in June. So I guess the month ahead will be one of thinking about where I really want to go before I drive.

Duck rising

I was standing outside of my office (building) early this afternoon.

I thought I heard a rustling sound. What was that? I turned and looked, nothing... I was sure I heard something though, so I looked again. Still nothing. As I stared at a bed of shrubs and flowers, I saw a quick movement, almost an explosion.

A duck had been hiding among the bushes, and she suddenly lifted her head and flew. Amazing!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Remnants of flowers

Dogs watching...

Have you ever wondered what the animals in a zoo think as they watch the people watching them? These dogs were barking, jumping, watching me watching them.

I almost never use the digital zoom on my camera, but these dogs seemed like the perfect shot for a bit of play. I was wandering with my G9, and I thought I'd try... You're absolutely right - a digital zoom doesn't create a good quality photo for printing, but sometimes... Once in a great while it can be worth a quick capture. These dogs definitely made me smile.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Hey - who ordered that camera?

Oh, you're right, it was me.

I was supposed to be buying a tripod. I looked and I looked. I was inching closer to a decision. But then my fingers strayed away from the tripods, wandering into the camera section. Oops!

My tripod wander was on the B&H site last Sunday, and somehow my fingers waltzed across my keyboard and added a camera to the cart.

Hmm… a Canon G9 popped up at my doorstep on Tuesday. (Well, not my doorstep, my office!) Don't get me wrong - I'm still having a very serious love affair with my 40D, but there are times when I want a small camera with me, just in case. And somehow I've grown attached to the ability to impose some control on the camera settings.

It's a truly sweet camera. We're still getting used to each other, the camera and I.

Photos are jumping into a gallery, samples below.

That tripod decision? It's still to come...





Saturday, May 17, 2008

Reach for the sun

A gray and wet morning gave way to blue skies and sunshine, a good afternoon for a bicycle escape.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Calming effects

A long day at work, a day of arguing with computers, a day of slow accomplishments...

Home, time to unwind. Bicycle wheels rolling, riding, looking, absorbing my surroundings. Fresh air, wind, blue skies decorated with wisps of clouds and airplane trails. Calm...

Sunday, May 11, 2008

A bridge & a dam

Blue skies, sunshine, cool warmth...

Two wheels rolling, bike still unadorned by a computer. I needed another day of riding, wandering, looking around me, and not caring how fast or how far I was riding. I stopped for quite a while to watch the water cascading over a dam on the Merrimack River in Lawrence.

The movement of the water is fascinating.



Saturday, May 10, 2008

Wings to Manchester

I've been keeping my eye on air fares for my September trip to England. I wanted to wait a bit, hoping that the fares would drop - but as gasoline prices have been jumping higher and higher I figured it might be time to commit to a flight.

I didn't consider many of the flights that are available; I refuse to head west over North America to fly east to Europe. Oh, and I only wanted one flight change. There are no non-stop flights between here and Manchester, but there are 2-flight options. With those two strong requirements I headed off to search for flights. The last time I looked it appeared that I would either be taking American Airlines through New York, or British Airways through London. All of the other flights headed in the wrong direction before crossing the Atlantic.

OK, one more search... and I found another option, an option for less money. Continental Airlines flies to Manchester via Newark. I started looking at flight schedules and found some flights. The outbound flight had a 1 1/4 hour connection in Newark. At first that seemed fine to me, but then I saw a clickable "see on-time performance". Yup, I did click, and I found that the flight I was looking at had a 20% on-time performance. Ouch. That didn't make me very comfortable. I even went so far as to call the airline to talk to a reservation agent. She assured me that it was a legal connection, but suggested taking an earlier flight into Newark if the lack of connection time made me nervous. I had her check the flights for today & yesterday. Today's flight was only 15 minutes late, but yesterday's? Five hours late! Yikes!

Then I realized there was a flight that leaves Boston a little over an hour earlier. Yes, I may have too much time in Newark, but that means less worrying for me.

Done! I have plane reservations and a rental car. All I need to do now is decide where I'm going to spend the four days before my photography seminar. Should I spend the entire time in the Lake District, or should I wander into one of the other national parks in the area?

Life cycle of a flower

I find it amazing that as a flower moves past its prime that it becomes even more beautiful. Unfolding tulips...

Thursday, May 08, 2008

An afternoon escape

Did you ever have one of those days when things just didn't hit you right? You know what I mean, don't you? This afternoon, today turned into one of those days.

Knowing that I needed to shake the "off" feelings, I decided that an escape was in order. Yes, I headed home a little early to work off those feelings. (Of course my early was after seven hours of work, so it wasn't really that early,)

Home at a little after 3 PM. Home, on a warm, bright sunny day. Home, with howling wind. Home, time for an escape, for a ride, for a little bit of camera play. I grabbed my camera and rolled down the road, absorbing the beauty around me. My bicycle computer stayed home, so there was no watching my speed or the miles covered. Riding, rolling, minutes clicking into hours. Almost three hours on my bike restored my equilibrium. I needed that.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Changes...

Sometimes I think that rainy Sundays must trigger an "I need to experiment with my web site" instinct. Evolving, growing, changing...

I had been using the standard look for the different photo categories, but the size of the thumbs representing the galleries was smaller than I liked. It's been bothering me for a while. I changed the Gallery screen a while back. I fought taking the next step, hoping that SmugMug (the photo site where my galleries are hosted) would change the default display. They always have improvements up their sleeves. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to find something like my format change as a standard feature there someday.

Sunday? It was very rainy, a good day to satisfy my desires for change. Each category (Wandering near home, Travel, Coastal glimpses, etc.) shows a single image for each gallery in that category. It's a single point to offer a fleeting glimpse into the gallery, an enticement to viewers to take the next click to enter the gallery and wander through the photos. The standard size thumbnail is 100x100, which is pretty tiny. I just had to change them. I had to! So... I spent the day Sunday glued to my computer. Thinking, experimenting, changing.

I know I have a little fine-tuning to do, but I think I like the new look.

Wander over to my galleries and take a look. Let me know what you think!

Oh, you want a comparison point? Here are links to my "Coastal glimpses" galleries, the old look, and the new.