Enjoying summer way to much

Sorry folks for the lack of posts lately, I've been enjoying summer down here way to much, camping and enjoying the outdoors.

Just a couple days ago I was up at my bosses farm, it was a great day full of activities, I drove a quad for the first time and shot a gun for the first time, it was fricken great. The area is beautiful to, great community and it seemed like a great life style.

I really wouldn't mind living that life, out on the farm, living a little more self sufficiently, instead of the convenience of the city. Looks like I may actually have a goal in life now and I'm really going to have to step up my game and work harder and smarter. With that I'm going to try and post at least one blog post every single day.

I'll leave y'all with a few photos from my summer so far.

HDR Photos - Countdown to Halloween

With 5 days left until Halloween I thought I'd share some of the H.D.R (High Dynamic Range) images I've been making, not entirely scary, but the results are a little unexpected.

I'm really new to HDR photography and I know I'm doing it the lazy way.

Kererū, Wood Pigeon

I managed to capture a few quick photos of a Kererū the other day, the Kererū is a pigeon native to New Zealand, I've only really known them as the Wood Pigeon.

My fathers lived all his life in this town and he never grew up with these birds flying around, they've only just recently started appearing again, maybe in the last ten years or so and so have a lot of other native birds. It's nice to see the conservation efforts around here working out, I probably would of had to go to the nature reserve to see this bird a few years ago, nice to see them encroaching on my neck of the woods.

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I got me a PSP

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About a week ago I went and bought myself a brand new Sony PSP Slim and Lite, bought entirely with money I've earned online, I've also bought a computer and a camera this way.

My motivation for this purchase, well everyone I know seems to have gadgets filled with their digital lives, I wanted to be part of that and I originally wanted one of those new Apple Iphone 3Gs, but once I saw the monthly plans (about $250 a month with an extremely subsidized Iphone) on offer I immediately thought screw that and began thinking about an alternative. The PSP came to mind, it has a big screen like I wanted, it plays games, videos, photos and music and it also has Wifi so I can connect to the net on the go.

So it doesn't have a phone, but I've already got one of those, prepay, $10 for 2000 text messages a month, I don't need minutes I never use my phone to make calls, crazy that.

Hmm, I feel a brief guide coming on.

Buying the PSP - I got the basic package which includes the PSP, the battery and charger cables. There seems to be loads more packages available in other countries that include what you really need to get the most out of the PSP.

What I also needed to buy - I needed to buy a memory stick, without it you won't be able to save games or play movies, music, photos on your PSP, a memory stick is a must for a PSP, I got the 4gig memory stick pro duo. I also bought a couple games, "God of War: Chains of Olympus" and "Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core."

What I also needed - To get that music, movies and photos on my PSP I needed a USB cable, lucky enough before buying one I thought I'd try the one that came with my digital camera and whaddya know, works like a charm. I don't have a wireless set-up at home, so that could be another option, but from what I've read it's a little complicated.

What have I been doing with my PSP - Well first off, I've been playing games, nuff said. I've also been filling it up with photos, videos and music using my USB cable and PC, though this isn't actually as simple as it sounds.

First you need to format your memory stick on your psp, this will set-up a folder structure, here's an example of what it should look like. As you can see there's two music folders and two picture photos, right now I don't know why that is, but for my photos and music I'm using the folders located under PSP.

Videos are the iffy part, they have to be a certain file type, either mp4 or AVC, so you need software to convert video files to the compatible types. I've also read they need to be named a certain way, but I haven't found that to be the case.

What I've been using for videos - I've been using a program called PSP Video Converter (PSPVC), which converts video files to the right type and then sends it to my PSP, works like a charm, PSPVC has a few other options that I won't go into here, lets just say that if you like a video on youtube or any number of video sharing sites you can also enjoy them on your PSP. I've also been searching "Google Video," most of the videos on there have download options and PSP is one of them, it's video overload. And lastly I've been downloading game demos from the Playstation Store.

That's as far as I've gotten with my PSP, I'm loving it, but my hands are feeling a little cramped.

Added orb photos to the image gallery

Just added my old orb photos to the image gallery, but I'm sad to say I think they're just of reflections of the flash from the camera on rain drops, still very pretty I think.

Shadows in the Dark Giveaway

A couple months ago I listened into the Shadows in the Dark, 24 Hour Paranormal Extravaganza, it was a blast. I listened in for maybe 10 hours, listening to some great guests with some great stories. It’s all kind of a blur, I’d been up maybe 15 hours before starting that 10 hours worth.

Jeremiah Greer and company did a great job and along with the great event they were also gave away a heap of stuff to their listeners and I was lucky enough to receive a prize pack myself, a double prize pack in fact. They were giving away prize packs every hour throughout the event, they'd offer it up to call-ins first, if no one rang in they'd give them to people in the chat room, well I was hanging out in chat, I was in the kitchen getting an apple when I heard my name, I didn't even know what I had won until I listened back to their archived show, got my heart pumping for sure.
First off I got UFO NewsClippings a CD collection of over 500MBs of newspaper clippings concerning UFOs over the U.K. Some really out of it stories on this disk.

Also got a copy of The Cleansing signed by Charlie Carlson. I haven't actually had the time to sit down and watch this one, but it looks pretty good. Need a nice stormy night to watch it I think.

As well as a copy of Lisa Gardner's Say Goodbye, seems like a nice writing style and it's about a serial killer, love my serial killer stories. Just got Dexter free to air down here and it's my new favorite show.

A lovely book titled "Ghost Ships", loads of stories along with a lot of black and white photography and illustrations. Never really looked into ghost ships before, the more I think about the topic the more interested I'm becoming.

A copy of "Mysteries" magazine, great stories, well written, but I realized something while reading through it, the news was pretty old compared to when we read them on blogs and websites. The downside is I've read about most of the articles already, the up side is they've had the time to really look into the stories.

The second to last item in the photo is Charlie Carlson's "Weird Florida", I was extremely excited to win this book and it's even signed by the man himself. Weird Florida is all about strange locations, crazy stories that can be found coming out of Florida. Great book.

And lastly a Shadows in the Dark 1 year celebration t-shirt, I'll save y'all from my modeling skills.

I hadn't won anything in years and this was a nice pick me in the times I've been having lately.

Cheers Shadows in the Dark.