Category Archives: Photos

Comments about photo albums or the pictures in them.

Second time’s a charm… wait maybe this WAS my third time.

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Headaches be gone! I found where the “Save as size” is at in my stitching program. It was defaulted to 9% – I went to 50% and it looks pretty good. I tried 75% in the program that makes the movie from the panorama, but it seems to choke on a 14 megabite input file.  May try it on another computer at another time..  (I have an old one I put all the “test programs” into to see if they are going to do something ugly to my system and it does not have a lot of memory.  )
Let’s try this again!

It’s a wrap!
George

There’s no beginning – There’ll be no end*

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Dizzy, I’m so dizzy
My head is spinning
Like a whirlpool
It never ends
And it’s you girl
Making it spin
You’re making me dizzy**

I have been playing with the camera, tripod and some software to make panoramic movies ’cause I think the ability to spin a panorama around is quite cool. So this is my attempt. If you have never played with a Quicktime Movie, put your mouse on the picture, hold down the left button and start waggling the mouse back and forth… once you get dizzy, slow down. The further the mouse is from the center the faster the picture moves in that direction. You could also go up and down, if I had made it that way. You can also use the “+” button to zoom in, and the “-” button to zoom back out. Kewl… I am dissapointed in the resolution that I am getting, being way to grainy for me. I have set the compression down to “1” which is supposed to be the best quality, but not much change. It is taking a series of 17 pictures, each about 800K and the final version is only about 55K. I believe it is in the “stitching” software, so will look for something else and keep trying.

Learning some small things as I go:

  • Do not let the camera strap hang in front of the lens – it makes a big black stripe on the pictures. (Oh man how “noob” is that!)
  • Don’t screw the tripod mount into the camera body to tight – it turns it off – I was starting to wonder if it was going to fire up again!
  • Don’t have neighbours walk over to see what you are doing – they appear in some frames and not others, although it does give a very interesting “disappearing” effect…. OOoohhhhHHH… ghosts.
  • Bright sun is not good since you are doing a 360 degree circle with the camera at one or more points you are shooting into it causing some spectacular sun spots!
  • Dark days are not good…. some of this one is pretty dark.
  • You may want to wait until the neighbours have garage doors closed, trailers stowed and signs out of their yards.

    • Hey, it’s just for fun, but could add an all new dimension to the photo pages.

    Until my pictures spin as smoothly as the world.
    George

    PS I almost forgot! This requires the Quicktime Player. A free download, although it has the annoying habit of adding iTunes to your computer also. You can go in and turn off the “system tray” icon though.

    * Troggs – way cool group
    **Thanks to Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff

    New information for Genealogy Researchers – or those just interested in Family History

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    Well, EXtreme Kazology is still pending, but I did get a lot of documents posted over the last couple of days. If you take a peek in the Kasdorf Genealogy when it opens, about half way down is Kazology Digital Records which will take you to a new page with links to all types of documentation. There are a couple photo albums and are really interesting if you are into pictures of tombstones and grave plots! A related family the Pickerings is represented as well as the Misselhorns. Duane Pickering was sending a lot of photos and other family information, but then the correspondence between he and I sort of dwindled. (Hey Duane, I am still waiting for the pictures from Canada!) He scanned hundreds of photos, created an index of whom is in each photo, when he could identify them, and then put everything on a CD which he sent me. He even provided a couple of updates to the CD later on. His pictures are here, but it may not be all of them, as I said he had hundreds and I do not think I got them all into an album for the web.  Then I added the Misselhorn family records. Marge (Ziebell) Misselhorn spent years researching the family and put things into a series of binders which she gave to her children. She was never interested in putting together a “traditional” genealogy with everyone arranged in families, by linage and all that, she just liked to make it more personable with notes, pictures and stories.

    The other really neat thing I added was Doug Holt’s “The Kasdorf Kin” newspaper. Doug is one of the three people who really got me started on researching the Kasdorf family way back in 1995 I believe. George Musch and Marge Misselhorn would be the others that assisted and prodded me on sometimes.

    Just as a comment, although I believe I have mentioned it before, these are large documents.  Each of the Kasdorf Kin PDF’s is about 3 megabytes. If you have broadband that is not a big deal at all, but if you are on dial up (I’m sorry to hear that.) it will take awhile to download the entire PDF, or photo album. Be patient, but if you are sure a link is broken or otherwise not doing what it is supposed to, please let me know so I can fix it up. However on the Digital Kasdorf page there are some links that for sure do not work yet. You should get a “404” error in just a short time if you use those links. I guess I could add “NW” by the ones that do not… maybe next month.

    Until Adobe Reader is no longer the defacto standard,

    George

    Oh Boy! It’s Movie Time

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    I tried adding all (one) of my movies to a web site before, but it did not work out so well. I did not take the time to edit it to remove some less than interesting parts. (Two portions inexplicably upside down, and one that was apparently taken during the solar eclipse, which I did not even realize was going on at the time!  So now I took the time to fix up a really old 8mm movie filmed at our wedding. A couple of years ago I had it converted to DVD since there are not a lot of ways to view 8mm anymore, and I assume there will be even fewer in the future. I took the DVD and ripped it to an mpeg file then did a few simple edits such as transitions between scenes an intro and then some credits. In the end I came up with something even a really bad producer would be embarrassed by. Guess it was a little easier since there is no sound. I do have another version I made with some interesting sound effects added, but getting it “web ready” will have to come a little later on. In the meantime you can see a few of the festivities starting with leaving the ceremony, getting home, packing the car and taking off for an extended honeymoon (in the Fort Wayne Holiday Inn…. five miles away…. for one night…) Try the dial up version first to see how long it will take to load, then try the next one if you want. Only use the final version if you have a good broadband connection and some time. Until the silver halides in the celluloid turn to black,
    George

    New and Improved!

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    Last night I dug down into the picture box. Pulled out another album, fired up the scanner and added some choice pictures to the Skool Daze collection. Lucky for everyone there are still some albums to go! If the scanner holds up and I ever get Christmas Shopping done, the Christmas Cards mailed (and they still need addressed – maybe fair warning, I think next year it will just be a nicely composed email for everyone.) all the holiday ham, turkey and giblets eaten and the last of the gravy sopped up, the last of the company walks out the door (not that I am rushing anyone off….) I can go through the other albums and post those also.

    Until we finish the over-indulgence of the season,
    George

    Comments on Skool Daze

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    If you enjoyed looking at the Skool Daze photos, and you did not see some, or any, of your favorite school related photos, it’s probably because I do not have a copy!

    You can always send pictures and I would be happy to include them here.

    It’s not all that hard to update the album, just make sure you include Date of photo, place taken and names of people in them.

    Here’s looking at you!
    George