April 2013

Armor for the New Camera

Camera Armor

We ordered armor for the new Canon Rebel T3 this week. It arrived today and we installed it on the camera. The armor is Made by Delkin and is available from Sears online marketplace.

The armor is a must for me since I am always banging the camera on something or another. Armor extended the lifetime of my old camera for an unknown amount of time, but for sure, the silicone rubber cushion saved the camera on numerous occasions.

By the way, the lens protector was not included with the new armor. I salvaged it from the old armor package since it protects the lens and provides a little shade from sun glare. Click on the image to enlarge.

A Colorful Prickly Pear Flower

Red and Yellow Cactus Flower

Bob and I went to visit Mom at the retirement ranch today. I noticed this small prickly pear cactus with a beautiful two-tone red and yellow flower near the entrance to the ranch. We stopped at the entrance on our way out and I took this image. Click on the image to enlarge.

Caught in the Spam Trap

spamtrap.pngI sometimes just have to laugh at some of the weird sh!t that gets caught in the spam trap here. We have been using a no-longer-supported plug-in called Spam Karma. Regardless of the non-support, it still does a real good job of eliminating an estimated 99.9 percent of spam comments.

The plug-in can be set to email some of the lower-score items to the webmaster. As I said in the first paragraph, some of them can be pretty funny, especially if the spammer is using his whatever-to-English translation software. This one came into the other blog this morning:

I discovered your blog webpage on google and check some of your early posts. Continue to maintain up the extremely beneficial operate. I just additional up your RSS feed to my MSN News Reader. Searching for forward to reading alot more from you later on!

(redacted vendor they were pushing)

Spam Karma 2 Report:
-0.43 – Link Counter: Comment contains: 1 linked URLs and 0 unlinked URLs: total link coef: 1 >= threshold (1). Non-URL text size: 289 chars.
-4.00 – Stopwatch: Flash Gordon was here (comment posted 11 seconds after page load).
-20.00 – Javascript Payload: Fake Javascript Payload.
-2.61 – Post Age and Activity: Entry posted 1 week, 6 days ago. 0 comments in the past 5 days. Current Karma: -24.
-1.00 – core: Severity settings adjustment.
========
-28.04 – Overall Karma
========

LOL – Searching for forward to reading alot more from you later on! 😆

Jump Shot

Here’s an example of the due diligence given to the economy and jobs by the administration . . .

Jump Shot

From Fox Business:

Payrolls increased by 88,000 last month following a revised 268,000 gain in February, with the disappointing report following two others this week that also cast a negative view on the labor market.

“We can now add the monthly employment report to the growing list of data points that simply haven’t met expectations,” Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG LLC in New York, said in emailed comments.

After falling 171 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) recovered the lions share of its losses to end at 14,565.25, down 0.3% for the session and 0.1% for the week.

Cartoon via The Patriot Post.

A New Camera

New CameraDue to an unfortunate mishap last week, my Canon EOS Rebel camera stopped performing correctly. Apparently, the camera fell from the sofa table onto the tile floor when one of the dogs (I assume) caught the camera strap that was hanging over the edge of the table. Despite the rubber camera armor, the lens hit the floor hard enough that it got jammed.

In addition to the lens jam, the autofocus would not work correctly with either of my other lenses. So, we ordered a new replacement camera, an EOS Rebel T3/1100D, a later version of the old EOS Rebel XSi/400D.

I took a few pictures with the new camera this afternoon and it seems to be working well. I will have to learn some of the new features on this camera since the upgrade included things that I do not yet know how to use. Expect to see some good photos over the next few days as more and more cactus flowers are blooming.