The I.T. Life

Since I bought the Jeep liberty, it’s alwayse been about going where cars usually can’t, it’s about going that little bit farther down the dirt road and the chance of more excitment. I’m starting to plan the gear I need to truly be packed for adventure. I will post with more lists as time passes, but there will be a survival list for winter, and a tech list for both working, and photography. The hope is to get this done by first snow. Wish me luck!

So, us Canadians, or at least us Nova Scotian’s, have a great 4 day weekend. We have Good Friday, and Easter Monday off. As I mentioned, I was hoping to do some road tripping this weekend, but I am really starting to think this won’t happen. Not really a bad thing, but whatever. I have been playing around with some open source portals the past few days and have picked one out I am going to start working on. Also, I am going to try to start a real portfolio, with real world work. I really need to check into what I can legally display of course. It might be screen shots and descriptions. I can say that I have worked on some internal projects, some work for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Marriott Hotels. I can’t go into detail of course, but I can put some stuff up eventually. Well, If I don’t get any road tripping this weekend, I can probably get some real work done… well, maybe.

So, the idea of this project got me thinking. I should find a way to display these, in order of capture time. Of course, these will go on flickr but I want something better. I want something that is very slick, and very cool. I got searching and found a php/js library. I will post the code and link to the library later but for now, here is the sample gallery.

So, I have a 4 day weekend coming up and decided at the last chance to make some big plans. My original idea was to have random friends over and watch movies all weekend. I changed my mind. I haven’t had a good road trip or photo shoot in months, so this is my chance. I’m gonna pack my bag with all the gear I would need for a full day road trip, so that is camera, lens, mac, ipod, external hard drive, gps, all that crazy stuff. After that I am going to grab some friends. My Fiancee of course, and our dear friend fergy (he doesn’t know yet). So, the goal is 400 photos, 4 towns. I do not mean 400 photos total, including duplicates. I mean 400 photos, good shots, that can be put on flickr. I know this is pretty crazy. We don’t have any goal for a location, we will just drive. We will have a gps on the whole trip, so we will have a log of the event (for geotagging) but if possible, we will take that a bit further. If possible, we will use very small usb gps I have and use a laptop as a full nav system. This will be fergy’s job (he is a great navigator). My only complaint is we don’t have a camcorder for the trip… but we might be able to locate one for our temporary needs. Of course, if we get shitty weather, we are going to have a great weekend movie marathon… or a lot of pictures from inside the car.

I finally got me a new camera bag. I was in dire straights for a camera bag that would hold all my gear, give me room for the future, and also take my new very portable macbook. I had a second not dire requirment of it being all weather. If it starts to rain, I want my gear to be dry, and safe.  I was about to purchase a National Geographic backpack, but It didn’t seem to be all weather, or even come with a cover. I believe the large backpack does, but not the medium. Though I was in love with the look of the bag, that was a big issue for me. I was shown a LowePro Vertex 100AW, and loved it. It had a full size section for up to 2 cameras, and tons of lens’s and flashes, plus my Macbook, and all the cables and extras for it. It was a pricey bag, I was hoping for $150 or less. I ended up paying much more than that. But, it is a very good bag, it is all weather, and comes with a cover that hides away in a little pocket in the bottom. My gear is very safe and secure, and I can go for a drive with everything. Like I mentioned before, I am able to capture photos, process them, and publish them all in under 10 min. I could even order prints at wal-mart and get them in under a hour… If I was very desperate. I would give this bag a 4 out of 5 for a rating. There is nothing really wrong with it. I am not a big fan of the fact that once I put a tripod on the front, I have to take it off If I want to access any of my gear, and that I am also not able to put the rain cover on with a tripod. I cold also go for larger storage pockets that have front access, the two that are there now are a bit too small for a lot of accessories.