Post Ike Post

As the city struggles to recover from Hurricane Ike, more and most people are hitting the roads. Driving to work, running errands, etc. Of course with a lot of the city without power there’s a lot of traffic lights that are just dark. Traffic during peak hours, while not all that great on a normal day, is extremely bad as those who barely (if at all) qualify for a drivers license vainly struggle to sort out the de facto 4-way stops that plague even the shortest trip on any given surface street.

Today was the first day I’ve seen the local police out directing traffic. It helps, but there’s still a lot of congestion. As I was driving into town this evening the traffic on 59 headed out of the city was the thickest I’ve ever seen it. And that was at 8:00 pm.

I swung by KPFT to see how things were going. I’d heard that the station had gotten back on the air on Friday and actually played “Here Comes The Sun” by The Beatles repeatedly for an hour. For those not in the know, this was the first song played on KPFT when it went on the air on March 1, 1970.

As of now the station is on the air and returns to the normal schedule first thing on Tuesday morning. We’re actually hijacking our own Internet connection to send the signal to the transmitter over IP until we get things sorted out with the microwave.

Of course this means Technology Bytes will be back on Wednesday which gives me the happy. Anything to return my own sense of routine and normalcy goes a long, long way.

We’re OK

Power went out at 8:00pm Friday.
It’s Sunday and there’s still no power. IKE was a diect hit and just about EVERYONE lost power.
2 million cutomers, lights out.

Posting this from a laptop on dialup. Battery is failing so gotta run soon.

Good news, the hummingbirds survived. I don’t know how, but they did. Lots of birds when we put the feeders back out.

Pray for electricity!

Tripping The Low-Light Fandango

My passion (photographically) is low light and available light photography. I love my lenses wide and fast and when that’s not suitable I mount the camera on tripod and shoot extended exposures.

Cynthia has recently shown an interest in this type of photography and I’ve been showing her what I know. We bought her a nice tripod and a 35mm f/2.0 lens and setup in front after dark in of the house to shoot the front door since it has leaded glass and has interesting light properties. She caught on pretty quick.

I suggested we try some new scenery and on Saturday night, after our customary Italian dinner, we proceeded on to Discovery Green to engage in some after dark shutter shenanigans.

We had a good time and Cynthia made several breakthroughs in her understanding of low-light photography. She doesn’t want to publish anything to the web yet, but I am going to share with you a shot she took that night…

The interesting thing about this photo to me is the fact that it’s an extended exposure of me taking an extended exposure shot of something else. Cynthia figured out that she could catch me holding still right after I triggered my shot, allowing her to capture me clearly at 1/2 second exposure and no flash. Good job Cynthia!