I tend to use my laptop a lot – it’s like an appendage, and everywhere I go so goes the laptop. My first laptop was a PowerBook 180 and I’ve hardly looked back since. Desktop? Too much for my carry-on bag.

When the battery in my current MacBook Pro began to lose the ability to take a long charge, that became a serious problem. Apple knows of the problem in MacBook Pros, but I wanted something better. I bought an extended life FastMac battery from SmallDog.com (good folks there at Small Dog). The battery arrived today, and I couldn’t help but notice the tiny print on the back.

geek humor

Rebel XT ISO 100
1/30 f5.0
55mm

Kente cloth from Kumasi, Ghana spread across the top of my bookshelf. Funny how the sun can catch your eye.

Had I the Heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet…
– W.B. Yeats

Kente

Rebel XT
ISO 100 4″ at f/5
55mm

Long day.

Lots of snow, lots of driving, lots of work in between. At the end of this day, after supper and some reading in a newly loaned book, I felt like dipping into the scotch for a single. One at the end of the day and then to bed soon. Somebody took 10 years to care for this, to nurture the barrels, and to let me enjoy.

amber

Rebel XT
ISO 100
30 sec/f5
55mm

I know – it’s a red barn in Michigan. I liked the light.

lighter

Small town pub with a copper-topped bar. I like this shot but feel like I’ve missed one here too. Even with a good LCD on the back of the camera, in a dark pub it’s tough to tell what you got. I think I really needed a glass of whiskey sitting on one of the rings. Amber whiskey against the copper bar, if I catch the light right, could be cool. May have to go back and try again some other time.

rings

Rebel XT
ISO 100 3.5″/f5

We have a few duplicate tapes from DPTV‘s ABJ show, usually dubbed across formats, i.e. a one inch tape copied onto 3/4 inch U-matic for a retro show or something. But for most of the tapes? For most of them, there is only one tape. Be careful… don’t break that. That one may be the only copy of Ossie Davis from the 1980 show, or of Bobby Seale….

Thanks to the generous folks at DPTV in Detroit, we’ve a one-inch video player now and we got it running today. So much more material to add to the website.

be careful…

Rebel XT
ISO 400
1/10 sec f3.5
55mm

For my friends who have seen the American Black Journal website we’re working on with DPTV, or some of the other sites we’ve made from old, saved video recordings, this is a great example of where it starts – very little dust or broken tape here. This is a nice, clean example of where it starts. Video geeks will note it’s not just one format here. There’s U-matic, 1-inch, betacam-sp, digibeta, DV-CAM…

More shows for the ABJ site is always a good thing. (Anybody have a 2 inch Quad player I can borrow?)

mysteries & histories

Rebel XT 55mm
ISO 400 60/f4.5

It’s cold here – but not as cold as the days have been. We’re still getting #&$! snow and such, but the deep ice of winter is breaking and moving. Slowly…

breakin’

Hiked down by the river today – sunshine and freshness. Still cold, but not as bad as the last few weeks.

chandelier

Canon Rebel XT
ISO 100 400/f 4.5
55mm

Boots off. Dinner cookin’…

day’s end