non-credit photography class

this fall, i signed up for a photography class through ut. this class has been long overdue for me. even though i’ve had my dslr since 2008, there were many things i needed to and did learn from this course.

the course is six weeks of evening classes and two field trips. several of the things i learned included:

• the whole stop points for both aperture and shutter speed adjustments


• how to shoot with shallow depth of field


• what to look for when buying a flash and a tripod


• setting a custom white balance, how to use accessories like extension tubes


• the concepts of composition

the timing of the class was perfect too. fall colors were in full effect for our second field trip.



i’ve been practicing the techniques taught for photographing family events. i believe i’m going to be carrying my camera around more to social gatherings.



i would recommend this class for anyone who has recently purchased their first dslr. it would be great to start with practicing good habits from the start. there are so many places i would love to take over knowing what i know now.

these are some of the photos i took and submitted for the class:

ut photography class, a set on flickr

i plan to add to this set with other photos as i go through them.

disabling suspend/hibernate/shutdown for all users but root

my situation:

we have a screen along with a keyboard and mouse in a scrum room at work. the computer is in a locked rack closet on the other end of the floor. i do not have direct access to this room. this computer serves as a portal for internet access and conference calling. i installed fedora linux on the system.

because of the remoteness about it, the keyboard was one that had a power button on it. occasionally, it would get bumped and shutdown the system. this meant we had to find someone to unlock the door to physically power the computer back up. we were successful in disabling the power button on the keyboard, but we still had a problem with being able to shutdown the machine from the gnome interface.

my solution:

i probed in #fedora on freenode and was pointed to using a policykit policy to limit suspend/hibernate/shutdown access to root only. the first link i found was this one:

http://superuser.com/questions/453002/how-to-achieve-users-are-no-longer-allowed-to-shutdown-the-computer-in-gnome-3

the syntax for the first response was for an older version of policykit. a little further investigation led me to this link:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1274130

the reference in the last post indicated this file has the control i needed:

/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.login1.policy

using the values in the first link, i plugged them into that policy file and was able to get it working.

i didn’t adjust the media seating or flushing, but all the power controls were set for allow_any to be “auth_admin,” and the allow_active and allow_inactive to “no.”

return to hoops

today was the day i decided to brave the court since my knee surgery back in june. actually, i had stopped playing over a month before the surgery.

i have been riding my recumbent bike since the beginning of august, and it had done a good job of getting me back into some shape. i say “some shape” because nothing gets you into shape like playing basketball, especially with some of the guys on my court.

i wanted to take it easy since it was the first time back. i believe that i did. my knee did feel a bit more sore than usual about an hour after i got to work. climbing stairs reveals that ache a little more than normal. considering that we played 4-on-4, it’s doing rather well.

i will decide on monday or if i should wait again till wednesday for further punishment. until then, ibuprofen and ice.

tiny tiny rss

ever since the shutdown of google reader by google, i’ve been trying and searching for a suitable replacement. list most, i’ve tried feedly, digg, and old reader with hopefulness, but all these seemed to have one thing lacking. i liked feedly the best, but their recent requirement for payment for text searching feed content i decided i needed to either find another solution or come up with my own.

i considered writing my own using python and django, but i thought i might give tiny tiny rss a shot first. this appears to have all that i need for an rss reader with a decent interface (included customizable themes for the css-skilled) along with a very nice android app. i can run this on a personal server and use the web interface or the android app to read all my stuff. it’s open source too, so that’s a huge plus.

for the time being, i’ve found my rss solution.

no longer a scumbag

as of today, my days of being a scumbag contractor have concluded. i am a full-time employee of scripps networks interactive (sni). and i should be sitting in orientation at the time this post goes live.

i’ve been working at sni for almost a year through premier staffing partners as a systems engineer. it has been a good year with plenty of challenges to keep me on my toes. i have enjoyed the work and the team i am on. i am excited to continue being a systems engineer. having a developer background definitely helps in this role.

i am very glad to be here!

samsung ssd

i installed this solid state hard drive into my laptop this weekend: Samsung Electronics Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 500 GB.

so far, it’s great! boot time is about two seconds on average! two freakin’ seconds for a full boot! i expect an improvement in power consumption as well as the speedy read/writes.

the only drawback is that it’s 250gb less than my original hard drive. i am going to have to be diligent about my photographs (imported from my camera) and virtual machines. those two eat away at my space quickly. (but the VMs i do have should run much quicker now.)



added: this link is to a video of the improved boot up:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110564541307000744618/posts/NP9mmt2NB3W

take this mug for a ride

last week, i decided to take a run for the first time in over two months. it was a little rougher than i imagined. although i was mindful of my knee, my body hadn’t had been through some aerobic exercise for too long.

since my doctor and (physical) therapists all recommended either swimming or bike riding for a safer, non-impact activity. and since i don’t have a pool, biking is my option.

because i think driving in knoxville is hazardous enough and refuse to be “that guy” who slows down traffic because i am biking in a lane, i decided on a recumbent bike for home.

the search on amazon took some time, but i decided on this one: xterra recumbent bike.



i like it. it did take a while to put together, not difficult, just time consuming. the convenience being able to roll out of bed and be riding quickly is extremely nice. plus i can ride in any weather.

this will get me back in shape for basketball. just how long it will take is yet to be discovered.