Author: David Mathre

I am a scientist by training (Eckerd College, BSc; Caltech, Ph.D.). I worked for 27 years as a Chemist in the Pharmaceutical Industry developing processes to manufacture medicines for human and animal health. I now spend my time as a photographer and world traveler. My interests include the natural world, wildlife, landscapes, sky, and seascapes, travel, and astrophotography. I look for unique ways of viewing the world and presenting my images. I have traveled to over 55 countries in six continents, often on Semester at Sea voyages. While at home in New Jersey, I spend time on home renovation and expansion of a wildflower garden/meadow.

Wednesday (28-August-2013) — New Jersey

Weather, Technology, and Power Out.

It was raining this morning. Before I could run the recovery/restore from the HomeServer the power went off. The UPS systems all started beeping, and my Garmin which includes a National Weather Service radio woke up and announced a sever thunderstorm warning. Before the computers shut down I sent a note to PSE&G that the power was down. It wasn’t just my house that lost power since I heard the neighbors generator go on. The e-mail response back from PSE&G was that the power would be restored by 10 PM on 22-August (six days ago????). I shut down all of the computers, and decided to spend the night at a local Marriott Residence Inn. I had credit for one free night at a Marriott facility that coincidently would have expired today. It gave me a chance to do some laundry at the Residence Inn while I wait for my new washer dryer to be installed.

Electricity to my house has been off for more than 24 days during the last 3 years — due to hurricanes, Nor’easters, and snow storms. For all the years that I lived in Florida, I don’t remember the power being off for more than a day. I’ve thought about solar cells and a storage battery system, a generator (natural gas), or just moving somewhere else.

Tuesday (27-August-2013) — New Jersey

Sometimes Technology Keeps Me From Doing What I Really Want To Do.

I know that I said that I would try to be posting something daily again, but ran into some technology issues. This weekend, I got an e-mail/text message from ATT that I had exceeded 26 GB of wireless data, and that that each 1 GB above my 5 GB/month would be charged at $10/GB. This was really surprising in that it indicated that I had used over 19 GB in one day. I only uploaded a few images (jpg’s not raw) and hadn’t downloaded any big programs or movies. My 4G connection to the Internet via ATT through my phone is good, but not good enough to upload/download 19 GB in one day. I had been moving some of my backup hard drive data from a Synology disk array to an old Drobo Disk Array, but via a hard-wired Ethernet connection. I did some checking to make sure that my internal data transfer wasn’t being broadcast either WiFi or onto the ATT network. During the process I made some changes to the networking configuration on my main image processing computer. The downside – I could no longer connect to the internet with this computer,. ARRG!! This is the computer that I do all of my image uploading to PhotoShelter, Google+, and my Blog. Well, I tried a number of fixes to the networking, but still couldn’t get my main computer to connect to my phone and bridge to the internet.

OK – what to do? As I mentioned the other day, I just set up a HP MediaServer (Windows HomeServer). One of the things that the HomeServer does is backs up each computer connected to it every night (first time full backup, and then incremental backup of any changes thereafter). This will be a good test to see if I can reset my main image processing computer back to where it was before I made any changes. Because I am paranoid about these type of major changes, before I did anything I ordered a new Crucial M500 SSD (solid state drive). I this regard Amazon is great in that I could order the drive, and have it delivered in less than 24 hours. (I was even more surprised when the new SSD drive arrived and found it to be 960 GB, rather than 500 GB). I used the Apricorn EZ-GIG-IV hardware and software to make an exact copy of the boot drive before I try to use the HomeServer software to recover/restore the original SSD drive to a state before I made any of the networking changes. I’m posting this from a different computer and will let you know if it works.

The next day I got an e-mail/text message from ATT that I really only used 1 GB of excess wireless data. I still plan to do the recovery/restore to confirm that the process works. This post is from my backup computer, and I really need to get my main image processing computer back on to the Internet so I can post some new images.

Four-Years Ago (27-August-2009) — Washington

Gone to See North America Road Trip. Day 06: Lake Chelan, Washington.

Darwin Award Candidate: Losing It. Jet Skier on Lake Chelan trying to jump the wake of “The Lady of the Lake II” ferry. Image taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 400, 300 mm, f/10, 1/1000 sec).

Losing It. Jet Skier on Lake Chelan from the rear of "The Lady of the Lake II. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 80-400 mm VR lens (ISO 400, 300 mm, f/10, 1/1000 sec). (David J. Mathre) — Losing It. Jet Skier on Lake Chelan from the rear of “The Lady of the Lake II. Image taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 400, 300 mm, f/10, 1/1000 sec). (David J. Mathre)

Six-Years Ago (26-August-2007) — Colorado

Summertime in Colorado: Rocky Mountain National Park.

Mother Duck and Eight Ducklings Resting in the Middle of Lily Lake. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs camera and 80-400 mm VR lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec)

Mother Duck and Eight Ducklings Resting in the Middle of Lilly Lake. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 80-400 mm VR lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec) (David J. Mathre) — Mother Duck and Eight Ducklings Resting in the Middle of Lily Lake. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs camera and 80-400 mm VR lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec) (David J. Mathre)

Saturday (24-August-2013) — New Jersey

Adobe Creative Cloud Licensing Crap.

Background, I have been using Adobe Photoshop since its first Windows version – I got it as a free replacement to the photo editing software (don’t remember the name, it was 20 years ago – may have been from Aldus?) that either came from a scanner or an original Logitech 64K camera. Earlier this year before going on a 52 day Semester at Sea Spring Enrichment Voyage, I purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro computer. The operating system for the #Surface is Window 8, fully functioning running all Windows programs. Although the Surface is a “touch-pad” computer, I got it with the detachable keyboard. It is much lighter than my other travel (Lenovo ThinkPad W510) computer. The screen resolution is the same, and the Surface has a faster processer. For photo-editing during the trip I installed Capture One Pro 7 (Phase One), Lightroom, and Photoshop (Adobe). Although I had a license for Adobe CS6, I decided to try out the recently released Adobe #creativecloud (I also use Premier Pro, InDesign, and Illustrator) on a 1 year trial basis. When it was announced that Adobe would be switching its licensing to Creative Cloud only subscriptions there was a lot of churn on the internet. Folks were afraid that the programs would only be on the internet (not true – programs still installed on the computer), processed images would only be on the cloud (not true). Images/works processed by the CC programs would not be available if the subscription ended (not true if saved in an open format). Could only be used on one computer (not true – can be installed on 2 computers, Windows or Mac, but only used on one at a time). One requirement was that the computer you had the Adobe CC program installed had to periodically connect to an Adobe server to validate the subscription. During the Semester at Sea Voyage, I did need to log onto my account once to validate the subscription.

Fast Forward. Yesterday, every time I tried to open Photoshop, a window opened telling me that my trial period had ended. Well, I have monthly credit card statements that Adobe charged me for my Creative Cloud subscription. Once I logged on to my Adobe account, sometimes I would get a message that I had 0 days left in my trial, other times asking for a serial number. Every now and then I would acknowledge that I had a Creative Cloud subscription and let me use Photoshop. ARRG!!

Elk Passing Gas. Yellowstone National Park. Image taken with a Nikon D2Xs and 200-400 f/4 VR lens (ISO 100, 200 mm, f/4, 1/125 sec). (David J Mathre)