Monday, July 12, 2010

Ken's variety show



I decided to reschedule with the optometrist; I already have enough to think about this week.
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The area has finally gotten some long overdue rainfall; it has been showering off-and-on since last evening. Presently the drizzle has stopped and the sun is trying to find a crack in the clouds. The grass seems to be greening before my eyes.
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I rode with Carolyn to turn a key in for one of her accounts; they called and told her not to come back to clean. Her contract was about fulfilled anyway and she was not going to re-bid it. It was a state job and low paying with service once per week. The rest of the country may be coming out of the Great Recession, but this area is still losing net jobs and income is falling even as retail sales are increasing; doesn't make a lot of sense. I suppose the people whom had disposable finances all along are confident to begin spending again; cart before the horse, I think.
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Sunday afternoon we rode some unfamiliar back roads in Greene and Hawkins counties, not so much to find photo ops but more to get away from the house. I like riding in the countryside but Carolyn is becoming tired of it. Tough!
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Yesterday morning and again last night I worked with the new software program, SilkyPix Developer studio. It is a a fully functional trial version and an excellent program for developing RAW format into JPEG or TIFF formats. I had been using RawTherapee to do the work, but the creator has stopped updating it so I decided to go in a different direction. RT was free, but SilkyPix is rather expensive at $150 but it is a much better program and at least the equal of Adobe Lightroom. I decided on SP because a limited copy came with my camera and I am familiar with its basics; now to save up to purchase it. Most of my photos from now on will be converted with SP and nothing else unless I need to do some special effects at which time I will revert to bloated and unstable Corel Paintshop Pro. BTW; I now have Paintshop Pro working pretty well but it is inherently slow; my problem was that I had some plugins on a network hard drive which worked fine on previous versions but PsP XIII has an aversion to such.
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Worsh Day!
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Y'all!
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are very warm and dry days in Poland now. We are not used to such temperatures - almost 35C. Usually these temps are 25C.
The sun radiation seems to be so strong. In May there were floods, now there is heat wave; a difficult year for my country.
If I don't need to do it I don't leave my flat or my office. We know that we must drink a lot of water and juices. Today I cooked a special light soup. I took only a piece of chicken, some of potatoes and some pieces of cabbage. I didn't add a cream.
Oh, I miss my holidays.

I know that you think about your small surgery, nevertheless have a good week, my friend. :-)

Anonymous said...

The world is getting as screwed up weather-wise as it is politically. I don't go out much either, we have roof over part of porch, but it has been too hot for sitting in the shade. I had a cereal bar for breakfast and maybe a bowl of soup later on; I'd love to have a big, raw potato. I remember your Christmas dinner; it looked and sounded fantastic.

I don't worry about the surgery; possibly having to be off internet for a while scares hell out of me! ;-)

Thanks, Jola :-)

Mark said...

We got a decent little soaking yesterday.

A guy a work said that Fasttone is a good image program. Have not checked it out yet.

Anonymous said...

There are several good and free photo editors on the net. FastStone is very good for basics, but not for serious stuff. Its RAW converter is basic, allowing not much if any editing before converting. It is worth a download and try.

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