2009 January 16 | Suzanne Earley

Mercifully, we had a warming up today, and temps are currently +2 (F). Still cold, but somehow, the fact that it is ABOVE zero, makes it seem significantly warmer.

Following on from yesterday’s photo, today I thought I’d show off the finished Scorpion robot, being put through some trials. It wouldn’t do what Will wanted, but after trying several different things he said “Oh! I know what it is!” And then he hopped off and headed back to the computer to fix his program. I was pretty proud of him for persevering. I felt bad that I had to drag him away and take him to school!

Mark and I are headed to a movie in a bit. I’d rather stay home and watch the premier of Battlestar Galactica, but alas, I do not have cable and can’t watch it until it’s available online. Pity me, I’m quite deprived.

TTFN-

Suzanne

I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I want to do is learn more about Photoshop and specifically, photo editing. I’d also like to learn more about how to use my camera, a Sony Alpha-100. The other day I was just playing and figured out how to use the Custom White Balance setting, and tonight managed to take 2 pictures that very vividly demonstrate what that can do for you.

Backstory, or…why I took pictures of a sock on a keyboard:

My Mom’s Old Computer is going to become my Aunt’s New Computer, and I needed to clean some stuff off of it and see if I could make it not be so stinking slow. Interestingly enough, simply uninstalling Trend Micro anti-virus seems to have done the trick as far as speeding things up…

As I was sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting for it to do things I suddenly thought HEY! While I sit here I could be knitting! And I am now wishing that all those years ago when I actually worked with computers for a living and spent HOURS of my life waiting for them to do things, I could have been KNITTING. Just think how much knitting I could have gotten done!!!

And now the pictures:

First picture taken using the Night mode on my camera. The color is WAY off. (No flash, just the overhead light).

The only thing I changed for this picture was setting the Custom White Balance, using the white countertop as the white reference point and voila:

Like night and day, isn’t it?

I didn’t do any further editing of the pictures, just resized them for the Internet.

If you are wondering what on Earth I mean by White Balance, here is a tutorial I just found that explains it much more clearly than I could:

Understanding White Balance (even if you just click over and read the first paragraph, you’ll get the idea)

What I know about photography could fit in a thimble, and I hope to at least expand that up to a mug by the end of the year. I’ll try not to bore you too much in the process, but I’m such a geek that stuff like this really tickles me.

(And look! I’m on the heel flap of my sock! Isn’t it purty??)

Suzanne