Copyrights

By: In: Information Technology, Off Season, Site Related

I rarely and explicitly copyright any of my works here. Nor do I put up notices of other copyrights here.

Most of the work here is owned by myself through Snowflake MSM LLC but I do borrow works from others from time to time. Mostly in the form of YouTube videos and there are some images I have used, but most of these are images of images that are well within the public domain. For example, the famous painting of Sir Isaac Newton I can not recall where I got the image from (other than to say Google Images) but the image is a straight up copy of the original and is not embellished or processed at all, so I think it quite fair to pull the copy.

However, other images I am not so lackadaisical about. I was at one time hunting for an image of the knee joint, but could not find a decent one that came with the necessary license, so I abandoned the post I was contemplating. One image I have actually purchased is the image used for my unordered lists bullets. I purchased that image from IStock.com (they google easily look them up on your own) this way the person who crafted that image gets some compensation for their hard work.

Likewise here. Given how easy it is to copy another’s work on the Internet I am not going to spend a lot of time watermarking and otherwise attempting to block your ability to copy the works here. Most every technique I have seen used to attempt to prevent people from copying works on the Internet I have been able to overcome (however, that material is NOT republished and is for personal use only). One or two of those methods required some effort, but most very little effort was involved.

So, if you want to copy material from this site, all I ask for is to please give me credit and a link back (and please do not hotlink the work, if I notice the hotlink I will put something to embarrass you). If you want an image in greater resolution than I provide on this site please contact myself (a form will go up sometime in the future) and we can talk.


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Webserver Outage Outrage!

By: In: Off Season, Site Related

I have to take these words to apologize to you. I am sorry, I was working on the lupine post last Tuesday (IIRC) and in the middle of that work the site started to exhibit 500 Internal Server errors. I did a few things but to no avail, could not read logs, could not do anything.

The next morning and I looked, this site was still down and I viewed a number of other sites I run and those too were crashing with the same symptom. The old web host was not fixing things and are notoriously uncommunicative so I am taking my business elsewhere.

This is the first site to move and the rest are following. No doubt, there will be problems with a few things here and there, but we will find them out and fix them as time goes by.


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RIP Baby Lupine

By: In: Gardening, Media, Off Season, Outdoors, Photography

Baby Lupine

Germinating Lupine

And its all over baby lupine.

What this image is, is a lupine flower just after it germinated and is one of a set of three seeds that germinated (out of about eight total). The photo was taken using my 50 mm macro lens and today I do not have the exif data immediately handy (DigiKam is having problems) so I can not tell you about the exposure. However, the photo is about as close as I can get, the full sized full resolution photo is incredibly detailed and he hairs (in the center of the sprout) you can barely see are very large, in focus and reveal, incredible detail. However, I do not want to give you too much, but look below for a snippet of those lupine hairs! The other piece of legacy equipment was my Benbo tripod and I used the delay timer to trip the exposure.

Lupine Hairs

The Fine Hairs of the Lupine

This image is not scaled up at all, but it is clipped out of the full sized full resolution image. The detail is incredible and this is one reason I just love macro-photography, there is so much to explore at the minute level.

Why the RIP?
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Sony A55 — My First Published Photograph

By: In: Gardening, Media, Off Season, Outdoors, Photography

I don't know, must've been the roses

Don Juan

This is the first photograph I am publishing from my Sony A55. The exif data shows the shot to be using my 70-210 mm F/2.8 lens zoomed out to 210 mm (315 mm 35 mm equivalent) and the camera choose ISO 1600 as its sensitivity, and the exposure is F/9.0 with a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. The photo is handheld and is taken from about 8′ above the bloom. The straw is a bit out of focus which is good, as the subject is the rose itself.

I have scaled down the photograph quite a bit and when the photograph is at full size the amount of detail visible in the rose is incredible. However, you need to settle for a 300×278 watermarked photograph. It isn’t the greatest photo, the bloom is the first one coming out a less than ideal growing conditions and is not so much a thought out composition, but just a shot taking the new tool for its first spin.
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Speed on Planks vs. Speed on Wheels

By: In: Biking, Off Season, Skiing

Here is the map of my 2011 biking season high (in terms of miles spun):


View 2011-05-21 07:32 in a larger map

Hmmm, for some reason (I would call it a software defect), Google wants to show the area north of my ride rather instead of my ride. Drag the map upwards to bring my ride into view.. Note to Google QA team: time to file a defect!

The hard numbers are :

  1. Total Distance: 19.2 miles (30.85 Km)
  2. Maximum Speed: 29.7 miles/hour (47.73 Km/hr.)
  3. Elevation gained: 1,052 feet (321 meters)

This top speed is entirely consistent with maximum speeds I get on my bicycle, seem rather slow in comparison to the near 60 mph I get on my K2 planks, no?
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Warren Miller HAD Best Beware!

By: In: Biking, Off Season, Skiing

Here you see my first composed video. I have posted video here before, most of it videos from YouTube created by others or my raw camera video. However, here you see video composed of scenes I recorded and then put together and edited!

The music however comes from the Grateful Dead’s July 17, 1989 Alpine Valley (which doubles as a ski resort during the winter) appearance and is the opening song from that show Let the Good Times Rolls, a show which I WAS AT!

The first scene is a bike ride I took on the nearby Wiouwash trail, cold day and I caught a long nagging and nasty cold from it. The second scene recorded in my brother’s car on Vilas County HWY A on our way to Ski Brule. The third scene is me skiing down Ski Brule’s Big Bear and this is my second ski film attempt, this time I hang the camera from my neck and tuck it into my jacket. I had to tuck it in because untucked the weight of the lens causes the camera to point at my ski tips and that makes for rather uniteresting video — which happens in the second ski scene skiing down Brule’s Otterslide.

The last scene is our fireplace at home and the credits. The snippet is only about 10 seconds or so of video and I repeat it a number of times.

Nothing spectacular, just something else for me to learn and try to apply to promote the efforts of myself and others!


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Twitter for the Phone

By: In: Information Technology

One thing I find myself doing more and more often, is shying away from Twitter usage when I am on the laptop or our desktop and confining the reading and writing of Tweets more and more by mobile phone.

I have been thinking of this for sometime now, since I got my Android phone and I find myself spending the majority of my social media (SM) usage is reading tweets. This includes retweets and my own tweets too. However, most of that Twitter usage is on my non-ski account. I would like to add that I am mostly using HootSuite, especially now I am finding out how to access most of the twitter functions one needs.

On that non-ski account most of the follows I have are people engaged in Twitter conversations and shares. They find an interesting article and push it out or engage in conversations with each other. It also helps that I have met with these folks or have had close online relationships already established before Twitter came out. However, I have a few very definite one-way tweeters out there on that account.

I need to prune my follows on my @WisSkier account and this time by using a more stringent policy than the do they follow me. They may follow me, but do they really? I think a number do not, and I’m not talking about those too busy or those enaged in other conversations to pay me heed, I’m talking about some very obvious follows who in the span of about 30 minutes crank out dozens of tweets a number of them being tweets I’ve seen dozens of times before.

Be human and take some sort of interest in what I have to say, not just my material, but when I respond to your material.


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First Bikeride

By: In: Biking, Off Season

Here is my first bikeride of this season.

Not so flashy as my ski tracks, but there is some up and down on this trip. It was a nice sunny day today. I went to town bought some bike-clothing to keep me warm on the ride. I did not go for the Wiouwash Trail as it is still snow covered from our last blizzard, I am hoping it will be clear soon.

Not bad in any way shape or form for my first ride, sunny, cool but not too much so, and the wind was not all that bad but definitely felt on the return leg. The drivers on this stretch of road were courteous and gave me lots of room.

The coolest thing about this ride was seeing a muskrat in a ditch. I saw it out of my periphery and then turned my head and I heard the telltale sound of a rapid dive.


View 2011-04-02 15:02 in a larger map


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Review of My Tracks

By: In: Information Technology, Off Season

Normally, you expect a review to focus on ski gear at a ski website. Jackets, skis, boots, poles, goggles, etc. However, this is going to be about a software application entitled My Tracks. My Tracks is a mobile application for Android platformed devices. I turned the application on this weekend to see what it could do.
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There Goes Sunshine

By: In: Off Season

Well, as this post is publishing the sun is crossing the celestial meridian from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere on its journey to The Tropic of Capricorn. In more plain language, Fall or Autumn is here.

While I have put out some words and text signaling my not wanting summer to leave I do find Autumn a time of joy. Watching my farmer friends and neighbors reap their harvests is always a joy, the sound of tractors and combines humming as the farmers harvest their corns and beans and get them to the marketplace. Cooler weather less conducive the mosquitoes and other insects is always welcome. A chance to walk in the woods whether with saw or my 20 gauge 870 is always a treat.

Of course, I would be remiss in not noting this is just another progression to the upcoming ski season.

In my mind the worst thing about this time of the year is the unfortunate layout of the roadways. Sun in my face in the morning and sun in my face on the way home in the late afternoon. Oh well, in about three weeks that will no longer be a problem again until late February or early March.

Farewell sunshine until next time.

Special treat below the fold.
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