Mostly about my amusement

Day: May 29, 2008 (page 1 of 1)

It was not all cod liver oil today

Now to work on turning

After his homework was completed, the boy finally rode his bike without training wheels.

Sunday his training wheels became bent so we took them off. You can see how it happened here. The culprit apologized but we had wanted to take them off anyway so it worked out.

He practiced for a while Monday but was not able to get going.  Today he and I went out, I ran next to him with my arms at his side and he took off.

He needs to work on his turns, but he is not afraid to fall and that got him going.  Like skating, he enjoys the idea of moving really fast and not getting into trouble.

Oh yeah, and next time he will wear his helmet.

Better than washing his mouth with soap

My son will turn 7 this year and like many first grade kids, he has learned some swear words. He also learned that he is NOT to say those words.

Today I met him when he got of the bus. I began with “We spoke to your teacher today” and he quickly replied “Yes I know. I’m sorry, I said a bad word.”

Now today we had a scheduled parent teacher meeting.  I had no idea he used a “bad word” and I was going to say that I was impressed with how well he is doing in school.  We started with the usual lecture about swearing and he pretty much gave us the brush off and made it clear it was no big deal.

Uh huh. I immediately drove to Pathmark, went straight to the pharmacist, and asked them for a bottle of cod liver oil.  This got an odd look and when I told them what it was for they said “Healthy and yet tastes awful”.  It’s a great source of vitamin A and D.

When I got home, my son was making it clear that he was not going to have any.  I took out the tablespoon and the teaspoon and explained “If I have to make you drink this, you are getting the big spoon.”

After some hysterics and me making it clear that he is not getting out of this, he took the teaspoon.  He rinsed out his mouth but trust me, he’ll be burping that taste for hours.  I should know, how do you think I came up with this idea?

Getting into photography

I’ve been playing around with the D60 and some digital editing.  Nothing much, just minor adjustments and cropping.

Walking to Penn Station

Since I’m doing such minor editing I don’t bother purchasing any photo applications like Adobe Photoshop Elements.  The freely available Paint.NET is more than enough for me so far and the more I look at it, the more impressed I get.

Per Stefan’s recommendation I’m shooting photos in RAW. I was using JPEG normal but even I noticed defects in images that I’m taking, so RAW seems to make sense for now.

In order to start using NEF files (Nikon RAW format) I have done the following:

  1. Install the Nikon NEF codec.  For my Vista 64 bit system I had installed this one.  The 64 bit one is beta, so check that web site often for updates. Installing the codec is for ease of use.  All it buys me is the ability to see a thumbnail in windows so I can find the file I really want to edit.
  2. Install this plugin for Paint.NET.  It lets me import RAW files.  I can’t save them in the same format but TIFF works out well for that.  When you install the plugin on a 64 bit system, make sure it installs in the correct directory.  For faster processing you can get optimized dcraw binaries here at the dcraw web site. Update: Per Benni’s comment, also see the Dave’s dcraw web page here.  Dave is the author of dcraw and has a good FAQ about the program and the portable source code.
  3. Install this plugin WordPress Media Flickr.  Okay, not for editing exactly but I use it to link images on Flickr into my blog posting. I had to make a change to my PHP5 installation but no big deal.  I can select my photos easily and if I wanted to I could search other peoples Flickr photos.

Now I can load up images and just work on then pretty easily.  I plan to check out Paint.NET’s forums and work on some goofy edits.