a couple of weeks ago, i built a wheelchair ramp. there are all sorts of codes and regulations for how one should build a wheelchair ramp. make sure to follow your local laws. if a wheelchair ramp is to be connected directly to a structure, you have to go to your city’s city planning office and get permits and show plans and the whole nine yards.

two great resources i used were the metropolitan center for independent living and the dallas ramp project. i based my design loosely on the dallas ramp project’s design and improvised once i got on site. everybody says that the maximum slope for a wheelchair ramp should be 1:12, but after having made a 1:15 ramp, i still think that is too steep. if you are building a wheelchair ramp and you can spare the room, go conservative! 1:15, at least, 1:20 is even better.

i wish i took a picture of the completed ramp, but i didn’t have my camera with me. it’s been a while since i have done any woodworking, but i really enjoyed it. it was pretty fun. i’m ready now to make my arcade cabinet. i just need to find some place that carries the MDF that i need. the local home depot and OSH both don’t!

i purchased a set of ebay RF flash triggers and they came in the mail last week. i gave them a test run over the weekend and they work fabulously. i have read about people who have complained about them misfiring, but so far i haven’t had any misfire issues. they say that particularly with the canon 580EX, there are misfiring issues. i don’t have a 580EX, but i’ll borrow paul’s later to see if that really is the case.

what i didn’t gather from the pictures of these units is just how small they really are. they are tiny! the only thing that i’m not fond of is that they don’t have a tightening latch on the hot shoe, so i can’t secure them to my umbrella mounts. there must be some kind of part somewhere in the world that will solve this issue for me, but i haven’t looked into it yet.

the triggers work as advertised, though, i haven’t tested range or how well they work around corners yet. i am hoping to bring with me the triggers and a flash with me to hawaii, so i’ll be sure to post some pictures of how that all turns out. i really hope that the super clamps that i ordered come in soon. i also plan to get some ball bungees from walmart. i’ve never seen them, so i don’t know where they would be, but we’ll see!

today is the big day! i think all of the wedding preparations are pretty much done. it’s almost noon, and i’ve got another 2 hours to get ready and then it’s gonna be pretty much NON-STOP. go here. stand there. say i do. walk. it’s a lot of work!

ok, time for me to get myself married!

thinking about getting the A-Data 16GB Compact Flash? i don’t blame you. at about $130, it’s the cheapest CF you can buy right now, at about half the cost of a sandisk extreme III 16GB card. so what are you missing at half the cost? speed.

this is going to really depend now on what application this CF is going to be used for. if you have a high performance camera (read: Canon 1D type body, for example) then this card is going to be glacierifically slow. how slow you ask? in my Canon 5D, i can burst about 16 RAW images before the internal buffer fills up. after that, i can take another raw picture about once every 6 seconds. just to give a little perspective, the already VERY SLOW hitachi 4GB microdrive can take a new RAW image once every 3 seconds after the internal buffer fills up.

i didn’t bother with JPGs because the 5D can buffer up to 60 images before the card limits you…and i don’t think i’ve ever taken 60 continuous images in a practical application. my camera is just too slow to fill up the buffer when i’m shooting JPG.

so, the question is, is this card worth it? if you don’t have a crazy machine gun-like SLR, absolutely. for point and shoots? if your camera can address that much space, absolutely. for those with inbetween cameras like me, it’s a judgment call. if you need high performance, errr, let’s face it, decent performance from your memory card, this is probably not the one for you. but if you are a casual shooter like me and use some discretion when picking your shots, you should be more than happy with this super inexpensive CF. it’s my primary card, it could be yours too.

i saw the black straws snoot and had decided that i wanted to give it a try. the hard part was finding black straws. apparently panera bread and boston market both use black straws, so i went over to panera bread today to get some straws. i felt bad grabbing the first handful of straws, but it was really the second handful that i grabbed that really made me feel bad…well, that and the shocked look on the employee’s face when he caught me grabbing them.

i made a quick exit. hopefully, i have enough straws to make the snoot. i’ll try it out tonight and take some pictures to see.

strobist: lighting 101 is the most in-depth series of articles about off-camera strobe photography i’ve read, ever. it is so well written and so informative that it makes me want to pick up my multi-flash setup and start to experiment again. i never really understood how to light a scene, but there’s a lot of information here and i’m hoping that i can take it all in and figure it all out.

i just checked my st-e2 transmitter and the battery is dead so i need to replace it before i can do anything fun. the big question is going to be whether or not i can take what i’ve read and learned and apply it in real situations. we’ll see!

a few days ago, i noticed that we had new visitors at the house. they were unwelcome, uninvited guests. my first strategy to make them leave was to ignore them, hope that they get bored, and leave. as with most problems, ignoring them simply didn’t work.

my next strategy was to confront them and try to scare them away. yes, they got scared. i was even a little frightened. but i think all that did was test their resolve. they brought friends with them the next day and started to eat our food.

yesterday was the last straw. they had gotten out of control. they were bold enough to eat our food in front of us. leave a plate on the table, they were there eating it. i had had enough. heavy handedly, i had decided to squash them. i started to swat at them, smash them, best i could, but there were too many of them.

it was time, there were just too many of them and desperate measures had to be taken. i fumigated the house. after 2 hours or smogging and another hour of clearing the air, i am happy to report that the house is ant-free.

i just got the 3500MGB-RAID Galaxy Series. it’s the first external usb/firewire 2 drive raid enclosure that i’ve seen. i dropped my last hard drive enclosure and the hard drive immediately died. lesson learned there, don’t drop spinning hard drives.

i’ve been in the market to add some my storage space to my home system. i’ve looked at building a file server and then realized that all of the drives that i thought i had lying around were SATA drives, not IDE. who uses IDE still, anyway, right? well, it turns out that the old, old computer i built uses IDE drives. oops.

i popped two drives in the enclosure, set up the RAID setting via a couple of dip switches, turned the thing on, and formatted the drives. it works as advertised and performance seems good. i’ll have to do some more work on it before i can see how well it performs, but it had no problems with me copying stuff to the drive while streaming out video at the same time, which is probably about as hard as i would task it.

i brought a coke in from home to drink at work, but i’ve been so busy that i haven’t had a chance to crack it open until now…at 4:35pm.

ugh.

it’s football season again and here i am making my plea to see if anyone wants to play in a fantasy football league with me. i’m already in my work pool, but i like to play in two leagues. so, if you want to play in a fantasy league with me, send me an email and let me know. if we get enough people, i’ll set up a league!