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Not too much to say
Today, after school, both Christopher and I went over to his house to plan out the weekend and sort through all the equipment we borrowed from the Mac Lab. Christopher has already mentioned most everything that we borrowed, so for me to restate the entire, final list, would take too long. But, all I have to say is that it was a lot!
The first thing that we did after looking through everything was, like usual, cleaning all the lenses and filters. It’s amazing how some things can get to be so dirty, especially camera equipment, which spends most of it’s life zipped up in a bad. All I have to say is, that was pretty bad. That is something which needs to be done much more often.
We created some interesting light painting images using a flashlight hung from a spinning ceiling fan. It was the first time that we’ve tried using this technique, and it turned out fairly well. The images are being imported into iPhoto right now, but before we post them, I’ll want to edit them in Camera Raw a bit.
Oh, I forgot to mention. Today we experimented with Snapz Pro, the application that Skocko uses to create his tutorials. Pretty cool! This is how we plan on making our tutorials for the “This is how we do it” page. Again, kind of random, but I’ve finally figured out why at the end of some of Skocko’s tutorials you hear a loud “cut.”
This weekend, I will be in Orange County, more specifically, Ladera Ranch and Newport. Both of these places are great locations to do light painting. So by the end of the weekend, I hope to have taken some pictures that are worthy of going on this blog and hopefully here as well.
The Illusive Snow Leopard and Other Stuff
Today, Kyle and I stayed two hours after school and prepped the Mac Lab for a much-needed update.
It all started three weeks ago, when Kyle offered to organize Mr. Skocko’s cabinet. For extra minutes, he offered to come in during MLSS™ and revamp Mr. Skocko’s organization system. I tagged along. That Saturday, we spent four hours going through the camera cabinet and completely reorganized it. We also vowed to do the same to the adjacent tables and the corner with the projector.
Three weeks later, we have made a small amount of progress, but we have also accepted another task. Tomorrow, we will arrive at the Mac Lab at 8am and install Mac OS X v10.6.2 Snow Leopard on all the computers. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Snow Leopard is the newest and greatest operating system for Mac. Mr. Skocko has the software disks, he just needs to install them. That is where we come in. We will spend many hours updating each computer to the latest and greatest software from Apple.
Back to today. We spent two hours after school installing all the software updates for the current operating system, Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard,which are required before installing Snow Leopard. We also ran a test install to see how long it would take (1 hour 20 minutes). We took all the pen tablets from the computers and packed them in a box for us to organize tomorrow. Also, we took all the headphones from the computers and are going to sort through them as well.
Lastly, we found two Mac Pros and two old G4′s. We plan to set these computers up into a high-end work station with even more professional tools. With any luck, we will be able to salvage parts from the old G4′s to make the newer Mac Pro that is missing a hard drive work. The other Mac Pro works just fine. With any luck, by Monday, there will be an extra high-end station or two for people to work at.
And so, tomorrow we will update the Mac Lab to the latest and greatest operating system from Apple. After that, we will install some extra software including new fonts, which will definitely come in handy. Hopefully, we will also make good progress on our reorganization of the clutter that is literally piled throughout the Lab.
As for my other plans this weekend, I hope to do some more light painting, but without Kyle (he is going to Orange County) it will be less fun. I borrowed two lenses (10-22mm wide-angle and 18-200 telephoto), a remote shutter release, a gorillapod, and a 58mm Circular Polarizing filter from the Mac Lab, and will try to put them to good use. I own a Rebel T1i, so I didn’t need to take a camera, although I was tempted to take a 5D Mark II anyway. Also, I bought a tripod for myself today, so I don’t have to fight with anyone for the only remaining Mac Lab tripod with a mount piece. Last week, I bought the 50GB expansion for Dropbox, so I will have plenty of room to keep my photos updated across five computers.
On another note, we hope to print some of our images tomorrow. Whether or not they will go on the wall or will just be for our own enjoyment is yet to be determined.
Everyone in the Mac Lab should appreciate what we will do tomorrow.
Well, that’s it for now. I don’t have any image for today, as I have spent so much time studying for AP Chemistry, that I haven’t had time to edit anything new.
What we use…
Here I sit, surrounded by a 12 inch Wacom Cintiq, a 15 inch MacBook Pro, and a 27 inch iMac. Behind me, I have my Canon EOS Rebel T1i, its standard 18-55mm IS lens and the Sigma 70-300mm Marco lens, that I borrowed from school, along with a whole bag of camera accessories and goodies. These are just a few of the tools that my friend and I use in our quest for success. Life is good when you live in a world of technology.
And by the way, just to make it clear, we are Mac people.
