This Lens Is Too Big

We spent some time over the weekend at Duke Gardens. I had been dying to get out there again with my 70-200, and by the time I was done, I was dying to get a new camera bag. I’m not kidding. That lens is almost 3 lbs by itself, which hanging around your neck for 3 hours feels like a millstone. I had to switch off the zoom by the end, in favor of the 10-20mm wide angle lens, part due to weight and part due to hand shake.

So I’m looking at the Think Tank Digital Holster 40, a camera holster bag, and the corresponding belt system to attach the bag and other gear to. About $100 all told. About 1/2 the time I’m using the extra battery pack for the camera, and I don’t want to get a holster that will prevent me from using it. Honestly, the whole thing will make me look more like a dork than I currently do. Especially as I’d still carry the Crumpler backpack around for cleaning supplies, lunch and a laptop, possibly. But, it will take almost all weight off my neck, which will make long photowalks a lot more pleasant.

Dropbox. There’s an app for that.

Dropbox has released their iPhone application. That is all.

Splunk 4

I had been ignoring the ‘hey, upgrade to splunk 4.0′ message I’ve been getting, as there isn’t a free license that I could find in the 4.0 release branch, and splunk 3 was doing everything I needed. Little did I know, splunk is working on a new free license, due out in Q4 2009. I’ve been playing with the new enterprise release at work some – and it’s totally worth the upgrade. If you already have log monitoring up and running, this may not be the tool for you, but it’s still pretty wicked, and it’s worth looking at.

Download the free demo.

Home Entertainment

I finally got motivated this weekend to load up the old laptop with XMBC, dig out the Apple Remote, and hook everything into our mostly unused television. We now have a proper interface to watch our movies and television shows (legally purchased and format-shifted), without having to dig out the actual disks. I’ve even started boxing up the disks we’ve already re-encoded to save bookshelf space.

The only problem I’ve run into is the configuration of XBMC itself. Much like a lot of open source projects, it assumes you already know how to use it, and that the more features, the better. It took me an hour of futzing about to finally get all my media sources defined in the right places (in the Video section, not in the File Browser, for example), and to get all the folders tagged and imported properly so the Library functions would work. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a cool package – but it could benefit greatly from an improved setup/installation guide.

An Update on Qais

I’ve been meaning to post an update about Qais for awhile now, but haven’t gotten around to it. If you’ve missed it, there’s a lot of pics of him on flickr and on facebook.

He’s starting to talk a lot. He’s not saying anything we can understand, but he says it very often, and damnit, he means it! Very vehement at times – quite entertaining to listen to. I’ve been trying to catch some of it on my iPhone with the voice memo feature, but so far I’ve not been pleased with the results. His other favorite sound to make, when he’s not trying to talk, is what we have started to call his ‘dinosaur noises’. He’ll open his mouth really wide, and hold it open, and then make a single sound that goes on for as long as he can exhale. He’s not playing with tones or notes or syllables. He’s just going for “how long can I make this one noise”? It’s really quite endearing. I’m not sure the other guests at the restaurant thought that the other night.

Which leads me into the next bit. We’re totally out of the phase where we can take him out to nice places. A few weeks ago, he surprised us by grabbing the lip of my water glass at a restaurant, and pulling the whole thing over on the table. Luckily, it was well before the dinner rush, so nobody got mad at us. Still, he’s getting to be a danger to the public order. We knew this day would come – when we wouldn’t go out anymore because of him – but it’s still sad to know it’s here. It’s time to gear up with the baby sitters/grandmothers to arrange our quiet times, I guess.

He’s also on the verge of crawling. We keep thinking he’s about to do it, but he never quite makes it into forward motion. He’s able to turn himself around (full 360s), get up onto his hands and feet with his belly fully off the floor, and move backwards. Just no forward movement. He also never bothered with rolling over. He can, if he really wants to, but doesn’t seem to care much about it. Charlotte and I have both read a lot that it’s normal for a large percentage of kids to skip that stage, and honestly, I’m happier without it. The thing he really has mastered recently is sitting up. He can’t get himself into the position, but once he’s sitting, he’s hard to knock over. He’s got amazing balance, and it takes a strong push to overcome his center of gravity. (We only push him over when he’s sitting on the bed, not to worry).

I’ll let Charlotte cover the food he’s been eating recently.