Toad Hall Weather, Photography, and Cryptocurrency Report
Lately I've been waking up with the dawn.
No idea what's up with that. Usually it's the dog getting me up, trotting back and forth across my chest to say get a move on or get pissed on.
Is my narcolepsy cured? Am I reaching that promised-land past middle age where people require less sleep? It always seemed to me to be the one great compensation of aging, so if it's my turn I'll take it.
It's clear and comfortable this morning, with a light wind from the South. Best of all, there are no icebergs in sight.
I'm really enjoying taking "the same" picture every day.
It makes an eye catching thumbnail. (I mean, you clicked it, right?)
That's some sort of exotic pine that my grandmother planted, and then your garden variety disintegrating cedar. You've got a sprinkling of my grandmother's ashes under that hydrangea, and the late Italian Greyhound Sophie's buried in this frame, too, so... boo! This place is getting wicked haunted.
Anyway, rather than posting the same picture over and over, which seems like a cheap trick, I figured I could just take the same picture over and over, which is merely lazy. That way my readers can experience a time lapse of this location, but in real time. (Want me to show you the future? Have a seat and we'll watch it together.)
When Simpler Cameras are Better
I take most of these pictures with a Nikon D3200 SLR camera - which is pretty much the cheapest SLR you can get. It cost $500 in a kit with two lenses, and was a hellofa birthday gift from The Wife a couple years ago.
You can't beat SLR for action shots. (I take a lot of pictures of birds. Birds tend to move.) I grew up using my dad's Pentax SLR film camera, so I know my way around apertures and shutter speeds. Good thing too. When you set this camera on "full auto" the flash pops up and ruins the photo every time. With a little finesse, though, it delivers.
When The Wife's birthday rolled around she chose a Nikon Coolpix. It was a compact camera appropriate for the trip she was planning to London, but it has a telescoping zoom lens long enough to make your garden variety porn star blush.
It's not the fastest camera out there, and there's no optical viewfinder. You're stuck with the LCD display on the back, which can be a little challenging to see in bright sunlight. But it gets the exposure right on its own, has a wider range of focal length (zoom) packed into its one integrated lens than both of my SLR's lenses, and actually takes crisper pictures.
It's only a couple years old, though, and the motor on that telescoping lens is already starting to fail. So: mixed reviews on both, but the Coolpix takes more vivid photos.
Here's the same view with the cheaper camera:
Crisper, and the wide angle is wider.
Here's the telephoto performance:
That's the neighbors old house across the cove, which looks a hell of a lot nicer than our much younger house, which is crumbling around it's 1950s cinderblocks. But we win, because we get to look at them, and they have to look at us.
They've also got this little boathouse, which looks charming in the morning light.
Crypto Tip of the Day
No, it's not investment advice. Does it look like I know what I'm doing?
But I have found a pretty useful tool, in the website cointracking.info.
Since Steemit dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of exuberant speculation, I've made a few trades on Bittrex. Their interface is... fine. It works. I haven't had any problems with disappearing funds or lost trades. But it doesn't provide a lot of information on the history of trading activity. Maybe this is why people get so freaked out on a down day. They forget that just a few months ago this stuff was trading for dirt.
For almost all of the coins Bittrex exchanges (and there are hundreds) you can only trace their value against Bitcoin. With Bitcoin swinging as wildly as the rest of them, the mental arithmetic of working out "wait, am I actually up or down on this?" was starting to weigh on me.
Cointracking provides a central site to keep track of all your trades. If you trade across multiple exchanges (like the Steemit currency market, Bittrex, and Coinbase), you can track them all in one place. It's free to open an account, and the "free tier" lets you record up to 250 transactions. Its reporting features are quick, visually rich, and informative, and it's easy to switch between BTC and USD values. Also, it'll generate a tax report you can hand over to your accountant this April, when he asks, "Just what was the cost-basis of all these trades again?"
The site's far from perfect. It was supposed to import a spreadsheet file from Bittrex, and generate all the reports automatically. I could not get this to work. Finally I just entered all the trades manually. A little tedious, but I hadn't been so active that this was unmanageable.
And I just headed over there to take a screenshot of some of their reporting, and found an error message that their servers are down for maintenance.
So ... check it out tomorrow, maybe?
Your pictures remind me of home. Still trying to navigate around all the cryptocurrency stuff. I think I need to start at class #101
Well, the good thing is the Steem will keep building up on its own so long as you keep writing! Just remember to head over to your wallet and claim your rewards once in a while.
oh yes, already put a nice lump in my purse :)))
Hah - well that's the best place to get a lump!
You really take nice photo compositions and your camera, as simple as it is, make wonderful colors (crispy, as you wrote, like peanutbutter)
I am going to have to try and use the site as the tax issue is one I'm concerned with. Been tracking everything on google docs, but worth looking at other options.
Right now my camera is just my samsung s8+ and I can't believe the quality it gives for a simple camera on a phone. One thing I really miss form using a SLR is the telephoto lens. To be able to zoom without loss of pixels is probably the biggest advantage over the cell phone. My phone handles movement pretty well even capturing kids at play without blur.
You can see a few of my photos in the last couple posts I've made. No editing is done other then to reduce their file size. Typically reduce to 20% to keep the size manageable. Don't like to do it before taking the photo as I never know which ones I'll want to print or use in our yearly photobook.
Some of the nicer cell phone cameras are impressive, aren't they? Get enough megapixels and you can always crop close to what you want as a "fake zoom." But of course there's no substitute for changing focal length when you want to manipulate depth of field and the like.
High end phones have amazing cameras. The ability to take good photos in low light and with movement is amazing to me. But they fall very short in the zoom aspect and also you loose some fun stuff that is achieved with an SLR. But for day to day activity it's nice to pull out my phone and still get a good photo.
I think I want to find a cheap but rugged pocket camera like the Canon Elph or something that can survive bouncing around in my pocket but still give me a little zoom. Not only for the better pictures but it wold be nice not to have to pull the phone out of my armband thing every time I saw a good subject.
That isn't a bad idea. The armband would make using the phone a pain for sure.
As much as cell phone cameras have improved, point and shoot cameras have too. They are so cheap for what you are getting compared to the last time I bought one...probably 8 years ago.
Think I might get my Wife one for Hawaii this summer. She is going with her Sisters, Mom, and Aunt for her 40th. Think she should would like a better camera then her phone has. If you end up doing research let me know what you decide on. Might save me some time.
I actually look really seriously into adding Nikon Coolpix to my arsenal of cameras but the video codecs/compression don't work for my need. But zoom wise for the price it's insane...People film close-up of stars on youtube never saw anything like it before.
Yeah, the zoom is amazing. I'm hoping the lens motors keep working for a while longer. I wish there was a manual override but when these things go they're basically garbage.
I am waiting on that promised-land too!!! People kept telling me I will get up early with age...well im 34 now...i still sleep in at every chance I got...this year im on the morning shift and I hate it! No I dont apreciate beeing home early....i apreciate my morning sleep more. :/ Getting up at 6 am is just not fun. :/
Are you a napper too?
For the longest time I was sleeping from 2 AM to 11 AM. Now I'm almost "normal." I've long stopped trying to make sense of it.
yes good boss
thanks, employee.