S N A Z L A N D

Tornado Sirens Wail...

2010-05-04T20:38:00.000-06:00

Distracting me from my computer screen. So I stop what I'm doing and step outside to take a look.

The first thing i notice is it's perfectly calm. Eerily calm. The clouds are incredible, they seem to be so low you could touch them, hanging, churning and undulating down near the tree tops, yet streaming up to tower over head. The classic anvil shape of a wall cloud.

Turning towards the West, the sky has that "light sea foam green" color. If you've lived in my part of the world long enough you know what that means...

Tornado

So I turned on the police scanner and grabbed the camera.

Technorati Tags: weather, photo, wall cloud, storm clouds, tornado, wisconsin

Reviving A Samurai ...

2010-04-07T08:44:00.003-06:00

As I am rebuilding my PC set-up (after a hard disk FAILURE) I ran into an issue with one of my favorite applications, Market Samurai...

For those of you that don't know Market Samurai is a suite of tools used to research, promote and reverse engineer (the competition) niche market websites. If you sell online, or plan to, This tool is amazing... check it out

Any-who... here's a tip for Samurais - Remember to DEACTIVATE your currently active installation(s) if you plan to move to a different / new computer...

If you fail (or are unable) to do this your active installations limit will NOT allow you to activate your fresh install. If you can NOT deactivate, due to a crash like I had, you should contact Samurai support and they'll do it for you.

In my situation I remembered this, but only half way.

I ALWAYS set up my PCs with multiple users (one as Administrator) and the other identities for regular use. Well I forgot to deactivate the regular user identity of the installation. Luckily I was able to plug in the failing hard drive and managed to boot up, run Market Samurai and deactivate BOTH Identities.

So the moral of the story, to re-cap is:

Remember which user IDs are activated Market Samurai users on your machine(s) and DEACTIVATE their installation if you need to move it. (or you'll be contacting support to clear them all)

Digital Laryngitis

2010-02-11T14:19:00.009-06:00

Webster's defines laryngitis as:

Main Entry: lar·yn·gi·tis
Pronunciation: \ˌla-rən-ˈjī-təs\
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin
Date: circa 1834

: inflammation of the larynx

— lar·yn·git·ic \-ˈji-tik\ adjective

I define Digital Laryngitis as exercising extreme control and restraint over the urge to post, tweet, or blog during a period of inflammation of emotions.

In other words don't post anything in the heat of the moment. NO rants, complaints, insults, accusations, etc. (whether accurate or not) which you will later regret and wish you could take back.

To rant or not to rant, that is the question...

EVERYTHING is archived somewhere by somebody (google, yahoo, way back machine, etc.) for whatever reason. Trust me once it's out there, there's NO getting it back.

There's a name for fools that post photos of themselves participating in questionable, or illegal activity on their MySpace, facebook, blog, etc. This term is typically used in some variation of the following sentence:

Will the DEFENDANT please rise... In the matter of fill in the blank, how do you plead?

Why in the hell would anyone post something that is going to make them look like a jack-ass?

Vanity over sanity, I'd say.

Recently I 've had a streak of life giving me shit, crap, and dung... See what's happening here?

It's a rant coming on... Oh no it's NOT!

Good ol' Digital Laryngitis / self censorship NOW ACTIVATED...

I'll thank myself later ;-)

Accessory Power DIG-AC7 AC Adapter - Quick Review

2010-01-26T14:37:00.008-06:00

I recently purchased an Accessory Power DIG-AC7 AC Adapter for my Lumix DMC-FZ30 digital camera.

This unit is an aftermarket substitute / replacement for the Panasonic DMW-AC7 and DMW-CAC1 AC power adapters.

The DIG-AC7 is a plastic box approximately 3"x2"x1" (80mm x55mm x30mm) the dc output cord is permanently attached to the adapter unit and exits at an angle. (see photos)
The DC output cord is approximately 60" (152cm) long terminating with a type 3 + center male plug. The AC cord is approximately 55" (140cm) long.

The case and AC connections are not weather resistant. This unit is for indoor use only. It should perform well in studio / video capture situations where power is required for longer than the battery could provide or camera controls inactivity causes the camera to shut down on battery power.

NOTE: This is an AC adapter ONLY - It does NOT recharge batteries. If a battery is present in the camera body the CAMERA will determine whether or not any charging takes place. (see your owners manual)

The DIG-AC7 in Studio Use:

I used the unit to power the camera for much of the photography used in this post. There were no surprises. The AC adapter / camera combination stayed ON and ready to go throughout the shoot.

Cord length may be an issue depending on your situation. I needed to elevate the DIG-AC7 unit in order for the cord to reach the DC input jack of the camera body. This was not a major issue in my case, but it is something to take into consideration.

The DIG-AC7 seems to be well regulated providing a steady 8.4v DC output.

Overall the DIG-AC7 does what it's supposed to do and seems to be an entirely acceptable AC adapter alternative.

(I purchased mine from Accesory Genie through Amazon.com)

#30DC - SEOC chart

2009-08-16T17:37:00.015-06:00

Well it's 16 days into the 30 Day Challenge and I finally have found some winner micro-niche keyword phrases.

They all pass the traffic and competition criteria.

I just found these today and need to verify more of the SEOC charts on several of the phrases.

I believe this first phrase that I've examined with Market Samurai has good SEOC chart.

To my thinking the high DA will not matter because the URL is a deep link to a product page. This validates the presence of a market and indicates product availability for testing purposes.

If any Samurai masters out there have any thoughts I'd appreciate your comments.

Notice the uncensored section of the SEOC chart in the URL section.

Here's the Keyword research data, the chart above is for the main keyword phrase (orange row)

all the rest are also good related phrases. :)

Shootin' the MOON - photography

2009-08-07T18:35:00.023-06:00

Warm Summer nights plus a full moon equal...

Take some shots!

Put down the Absynth - Not that kind of shot. (for the moment, anyway)

These kind of shots...

Photographs

The first is a crop of an image created using my trusty "poor man's Leica" (Lumix DMC-FZ30) with the Leica telephoto zoom lens cranked to full tilt boogie (12x / 420mm equivalent).

Camera was on a tri-pod with manual exposure settings of ISO 100, F11 aperture, at 1/100 sec.

How many "Man in the Moon" faces do you see?

The next picture is of the full moon rising over Lake Winnebago.

The same set-up was used to capture the image except the exposure settings. A program shift Auto exposure mode was used resulting in the following settings: ISO 100, F3.7, and 1.0 sec.

These settings yielded a "pretty HOT" moon (bright white, washed out)

I spent a bit of time tweaking it in photoshop to get this final image.

Whada ya think?

PHP - MySQL woes...

2009-01-04T13:25:00.001-06:00

Okay I've been marketing my artistic photography (and other cool stuff) online for a while now. This involves linking to my items, usually through some long convoluted URL. like:

http://www.somename.com/dept/add2cart.cgi?product_number=1687564695&acc=more&onandon=ONandONweGO...etc

You get the picture.

Well Dan Raine (of IE & 30DC fame) gave out some cool goodies for xmas this year, including Redirection Rocket.

Redirection Rocket is a handy set of PHP scripts that shortens these long URLs into nice ciustom (whatever you want) URLs and stores them in a MySQL database.

Heres my problem:

The redirection only works when the destination URL is a short "clean" URL (no special characters: ? + = etc)

example: Let's say I want to send people to my zazzle gallery with this link:

http://snazland.net/recommends/FineArtPhotos

Using the Red'Rocket interface I set it all up so that the desired link will redirect/cloak the actual (long) URL. I get strange results... Depending on the destination URL structure

http://www.zazzle.com/ - works OK
http://www.zazzle.com/word1001 - works OK

http://www.zazzle.com/?rf=238571857448421591 - FAILS
http://any.url.with.special.characters.com/?here_we_go=not - FAILS

Failures are blank pages, 301 error pages, 404 error pages, etc...

I've tried \ un-escaping special characters. %3F hex encoding special characters...

I'm about out of options troubleshooting this. Any PHP wizards have an idea/suggestions???

Thanks

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Fine Art Photography Prints on Zazzle

2008-11-11T20:47:00.001-06:00

I've been playing around with Zazzle again...

I still haven't learned all of the "quirks" of the create a product module. I screwed up the size choices for some posters / prints when I first created them.

Now too few sizes are available to any potential customers. Grrr...

I can't figure out how to correct this problem. more Grrr...

I could create a new version, selecting huge, BUT I would loose all of the comments & votes already there...

Not to mention any existing incoming links. (I'm sorta pissed...)
Guess I'll be posting in the zazzle support section.

Oh well. Sing it Dorris!

Here's a hip lil' gallery
Fine Art Photography Prints on Zazzle

Hiatus Interuptus

2008-11-11T20:17:00.002-06:00

Well well, look what the cat dragged in...

Yeah I've been gone daddy gone for a while now.

A LOT has happened. A lot that kept me away...

Away from the camera.

Away from photography.

Away from blogging.

Away from the computer.

If you've been following my tweets you know I recently had cataract surgery.
(October 29th to be exact)

Everything is coming along nicely post surgery :)

It came on very slowly, the loss of vision...

This time, unlike the first time, It was so gradual that I constantly adapted. Never really knowing just how bad my vision was getting.

And then I failed the vision test to renew my drivers license... (oh f*k yeah!)

...

Things are much better now

(except for the $ bills - no insurance)

The Month From HELL...

2008-05-29T20:04:00.004-06:00

Is almost over!

... and things are improving. The food photo shoot went well and the final product (electronic menu) looks quite slick. Josef (client) is very pleased. This may lead to a new business... :)

That sure as hell beats fixing the toilet, replacing the Daytona's fuel pump, and all the other shit that this month has entailed.

Good riddance to May I say!

Squidoo-do-do-di-da-da-da...

2008-05-02T22:00:00.005-06:00

I love squidoo but sheeeeze!!

WARNING: THIS IS A RANT

I've been waiting F*ing forever now to launch a group... I can't edit the F*ing description/intro module, nothing "saves". All the other modules work dandy. Just the description, only the most important one, with all my cut-n-pasted notes and draft material haphazardly strewn about... un f*ing editable... grrr...

YES I've filed a f*ing Bug report. Asked for help in the forums and tweeted about it... See my request for help.

Note to self... (squidoo tip):

Add a new text module for drafting stuff. DON'T put notes and such in the description section.

Lesson learned. Never again...

Framing the Frosted Trees image

2008-04-09T22:04:00.004-06:00

I finally redeemed my award from the photo contest. $ 100.00 towards matting and framing at The Frame Workshop. I went with a classic gallery look, black frame, white mat, conservation/archival methods were used.

I have to say they did an excellent job! The quality is superb and the service was wonderful. Special thanks to Michelle and Sarah.

For top notch matting and framing that will raise a piece up to another level... The Frame Workshop is an easy choice. They will get more of my business :)

1969 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 Convertible

2007-10-05T20:52:00.000-06:00

My friend Ron owns this beautiful 1969 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 Convertible (among other Mustangs). This car is totally stock, extremely rare and highly collectible (less than 200 were made, less than 30 known to still exist).

That's a surfboard bungeed on top!

This shot was taken at a car show with a lot of pedestrian traffic. The sun was quite harsh and this jpg needed adjustment to clean it up. I hope to take shots of this car in a more photo friendly setting.

dis.cover.ing - del.icio.us

2007-08-08T23:36:00.001-06:00

I've recently began using del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and other web 2.0 social networking tools to promote my photography (and other interests).

I became more interested in all of this after discovering (and signing up for) the Thirty Day Challenge.

Photography is probably a "too much competition area" though. It will be interesting to see if I can use the techniques revealed in the challenge to promote my photography, or if I'll end up using a different "niche" for the challenge...

Stay tuned.

Honk! Honk!

2007-06-10T21:25:00.000-06:00

Just tooting my own horn...

Well the June issue of Fox Cities Magazine is out and my "1st place - things" photo is on page twenty (20).

(I also commented on the photo when it was selected)

The photograph was taken in the autumn of 2006 along the western shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts. It was captured in "raw" format using a Lumix DMC-FZ30, held in hand. A fill flash was used, the composition is as shot, no cropping or retouching were done to the image. The location was somewhat difficult to reach and precarious to photograph.

As you can see, my photograph received a full page spot.

Fox Cities Magazine is a regional, home town favorite, "glossy" magazine in Wisconsin. Here's what the judges had to say about my winning entry:

First Place - Things
Jerry Schnese, Menasha

"Instantly brings to mind the Fox Cities and the river. This is a very interesting photograph visually with the unusual angle and the colors."

All of the winning entries are currently on display at Murray Photo located in City Center, downtown Appleton, Wisconsin. The exhibition will run through June 2007. If you're in the area stop by and check out all the winners.

This image, along with others, can be purchased as a framed print or in a variety of forms through my online gallery and boutique @ CafePress.

A limited number of copies of this issue of Fox Cities Magazine are available. Contact me if you are having trouble obtaining a copy.

I Dodged Another Bullet...

2007-06-10T21:05:00.000-06:00

I am posting this after the fact, several weeks late...

In mid May 2007 I had a scare with DVT (deep vein thrombosis). I developed a blood clot in my leg. This can have deadly consequences, i.e. stroke / death.

Best guess as to how, or why this happened is that I spent way too much time seated at my computer desk working on the latest version of my main photohraphy website.(word1001.com)

Now I'm just a bit leery of my work station... Great, just f*ing great...

1st Place - Fox Cities Magazine Photo Contest

2007-04-18T18:12:00.000-06:00

Well I just received a nice phone call from Rob Zimmer of Fox Cities Magazine informing me that one of my photos took 1st place in the "things" category of the Fox Cities Magazine's People, Places and Things, Amateur Photography Contest.

Here's my winning shot, It's entitled "Where's Jack?" - a title that started as a joke, but then stuck. It's an obscure reference to the curly scenery in the Tim Burton film "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I can envision Jack Skellington standing on this tree with all it's gnarled curling branches. The work of Roger Dean also comes to mind upon viewing this image.

This shot along with the other winning entries will be featured in the June 2007 issue.

This should give my photography and related web sites some nice, free local exposure and publicity. Framed Prints, Magnets and other swag with this image can be purchased from my online boutique - word1001.com.cafe

Click to see all my entries in this contest.

13th - on - 13th

2007-04-13T22:48:00.000-06:00

-cue Twilight Zone music-
Friday the 13th is no big deal to me, but I thought it was funny (strange and humorous) when I noticed my latest MySpace friend (my 13th) had added me and left a message on the 13th...
-fade out Twilight Zone music-

Photography Contest Entries

2007-03-12T21:18:00.000-06:00

Well here they are, the photos I entered in the 2007, Fox Cities Magazine: People, Places & Things Photography Contest. The contest is/was open to local, amateur photographers. Photos had to have been taken locally in 2006. Other rules and restrictions also apply/applied. Anyway... Here's what I entered. Entry deadline is/was March 15, 2007. Winning entries will be published in the June 2007 issue, with the overall winner landing on the cover...

Framed prints of these images are available for purchase at my online boutique, word1001 - The Final Word in Fine Art Photography & Prints.

I'd Like to Thank the Academy...

2007-03-03T23:39:00.000-06:00

Cool, my Lumix / Leica Camera Lens was selected as the Feb. 2007 Squidoo commerce lens of the month. Winning the peoples choice award is very gratifying. I have some people to thank, but first a little irony.

I'm honored, and at the same time baffled. You see I was just rejected for an ecommerce content creator position that I had applied for, at a major non-profit organization that shall remain nameless (for now...). I included the Lumix lens URL in my application letter (email) amongst others. I embedded a tid code in these URLs so I could track visitor stats... Guess what? You know it, the jackasses never even bothered to look at my work! Their loss...

Irony = receiving both an award and a rejection notification, for the same skill set, in the same week... Sometime you just have to laugh.

Thank you and a shout out to:

All the jurists @ By Invitation Only over at Squidoo.
Margaret, for running the lenses and groups promoting the lens.
Zuzanna, for noticing the Lumix lens in the first place ;)
Megan, for the LOTD selection.
Everyone who commented, rated, or in some way interacted with the Lumix Cameras lens.
Anyone that I've overlooked (its getting to be red-eyed time here) who's replied to my blurbs in the lounge.
A special Thank You & You're welcome, to the camera shoppers who've found the information helpful. (You'll enjoy your new Lumix)
and above all...
Seth Godin, for spreading the philosophy and providing the SQUIDOO venue to demonstrate it in action.

Not a sheepwalker in the bunch :)

Photo selecting - myspace progress

2007-02-20T00:05:00.000-06:00

...looking through my 2006 photos, I need to pick some favorites for entry in a photography contest being run by Fox Cities Magazine. A hometown glossy, and quite popular with the locals. I'm hoping for some good exposure / PR. - Stay Tuned

...been working on the myspace stuff. Mildly pimp'd. I prefer a classic, clean, page design.
I started looking up old friends (real vs virtual)

Hey! Check your inbox...

...got some really interesting screen grabs of stats for my Lumix lens on squidoo. I am sure I'll be compiling something, so any interested squids out there stay tuned...

2007-02-15T18:13:00.000-06:00

testing image link - my Photo Gallery on Squidoo

1st MySpace Friend Today

2007-02-15T18:00:00.000-06:00

foxenigma invited me. He's a young photographer from Canada. Seems cool, I accepted, and dropped a thanks for the invitation message.

He is my first real friend on myspace. I was not even looking yet, I wanted to get some feedback about my profile (is it too commercial? etc.) before I started inviting... But hey, he found me...

And so, it has begun...

Happy Anti-Valentines Day

2007-02-14T23:27:00.000-06:00

Current Squidoo Lens Stat's

2007-02-12T15:10:00.000-06:00

The Lumix Digital Camera squidoo lens is #3 in Shopping, LensRank #14 overall.

The online Fine Art Photography lens that functions as an Art Gallery is rated #34 in Arts & Literature, LensRank #442 overall.

check 1,2,3... is this thing on ?

2007-02-09T23:07:00.000-06:00

day 0 - The blog is established...

Announcing:

My squidoo lens on Lumix Digital Cameras by Panasonic, the Feb. 08, 2007 - LOTD receipient. I may write a lens on how to go from Zero to LOTD in 72hrs. This lens did just that.

Another photography related squidoo lens which is an Online Art Gallery, an eGallery if you will, and my CafePress boutique featuring my Fine Art Photography.

C U L8R