S T A T R I X

I've decided that I really want to use my own domain for blogging to keep things consistent. I've moved to a new web host and have set up statrixblog.statrix.com .

Yesterday I was pleased to find that the eBay trigger and slaves I'd ordered had arrived. This is actually quite impressive as I'd ordered them four days before and they had to travel from Hong Kong. I've had orders on eBay from the mainland take quite a bit more time. The package was an unassuming brown envelope, rather smaller than I'd imagined. This rather pleased me because I was afraid they might be larger than would be strictly useful. I have the hot-shoe variety, not the cabled variety (though they can be used that way I gather). I took this image quickly with dreaded on-camera flash just to illustrate what I received. There a better image in an article on the DSLBlog about them. The item under the equipment is a homemade bounce diffuser I made with instructions linked on Strobist.com. I unpacked the lot and spent a couple of minutes figuring out how to attach them to my D-80 and my SB-800. First the batteries went in and I managed not to break anything. The co

Happy New Year to any and all MGPS folks who drop by for spell. As you can see by my photo I'm healthy, a bit too healthy by the look of my double chin! Feel free to look around , leave a comment, whatevahs! Aloha!

Here's a quick shot, the kind I post to the Weather Underground "Wunder Photos" . The are generally grab shots I take from the roof at work or wherever I happen to be. They are almost always taken with a my FinePix F30 as it's easy to take to work and carry in my pocket. Here's the shot... You can see it again here if you like along with all my others on that site. As you can see, I don't make too much of an effort to do more than document the weather. It's hard to do much more than that in a few minutes break from work. Speaking of which, break time is over. Aloha!

My, my, there’s so much to do here if I want this blog to be successful, at least according to “informed sources.” That really brings up the question of what this blog is intended to do. I like to think of it as a “starter” blog, at least it’s my “starter” blog. I remember when I was a kid many moons ago I grew some “starter” beans. No giant came down a beanstalk, but it sure was fun. I grew them hydroponically on our lanai and had, as I recall, about five plants growing out of a plastic dish tub. The setup actually produced enough lima beans for a good meal for myself and my mom and dad. Well I guess that’s what I’m doing here. Trying to grow at least one good meal with some “starter” beans. My two big interests these days, at least those I’ll talk about, are photography and travel, preferably together. I’ve only been taking a P&S along, most recently a FinePix F30 , which I love. It’s a great camera, especially in low light. A lot of my weather photos have been taken with it. I’

Christmas has come and gone for another year. Instead of spending a fortune shopping or completely ignoring the gifting this year, I decided to do something different. Since I've been doing more and more photography, I took an image I'd recently taken, tossed on an appropriate thought, printed a bunch of them, stuck them in frames, and gave them to my family members. They loved them, more for the fact that I created them I think than any real artistic value. But it was fun. So there I am at the party when my sister mentions that a friend's daughter is graduating from HS this year and would I be interested in taking some "senior pictures." I'm pretty sure this is different from the actual graduation picture. I believe these are shots that they can include in the yearbook, give to friends, what have you, in addition to the "official" head shot. To be honest, I said no at first. I suggested they hire a professional to make sure it came out right. Th