Some Sounds from the Past

January 17, 2015

I spent some time this past week getting more familiar with my Panasonic Lumix Tammy bought me for Christmas. It's my 3rd variation of this camera that I've had in the last 7 years or so. I like them. There's so much it can do and it's not enough to be just a little bit familiar with its many abilities. I want to be able to quickly navigate the menu to get the desired result without too much fumbling around. That's going to take practice and more time spent with the manual, actually getting all the way through it.

I'm very impressed with the Intelligent Zoom mode. I took this photo out of our window from about 18-20 feet away. My experience with other digital zooms is that photo quality quickly suffers using them so I avoid them. Not this one.

I'm listening to some long lost music from my album collection as I blog; specifically the Bellamy Brothers! Nope, I'm not much for country but I love every song on this album, the one featuring their song Let Your Love Flow from 1976.

I methodically went about digitizing several albums with my Stanton turntable and its USB output connection. I'm very pleased with the results. Actually, I don't think I could be happier. Here's a sample, a long-forgotten gem from The Tarney/Spencer Band from 1978. No Time to Lose.

The turntable came with some iZotope software to process the songs into my Macbook. From there I dragged them into Audacity and cleaned up what few ticks and pops I had, which were surprisingly few. They're all currently residing in my iTunes looking pretty as can be! The Best of Bread is the only one in that group available in CD format. I've looked and looked over the years for the others but have never found them. They just simply don't exist in the retail world in a digital format. I've got several more albums I'd like to convert as well.

I had one of my photos from our trip to South Dakota last summer transferred to canvas. It arrived a couple days ago and I really like how it looks but no matter where I put it in the house it just doesn't seem to fit. I may have a spot down in the workout room where I can see it while I ride my trainer but I was hoping for something different. I planned to put it in the sunporch but it doesn't seem to work there, not even the laundry room. If nothing else I suppose it could work as garage wall art. I've still got a Lance Armstrong poster hanging there that needs replacing.

I'm fully committed to retiring at the expiration (or before) of my countdown widget pictured to the left which expires on January 2nd, 2016. It's been nice to be able to work beyond age 56 (the required retirement age for controllers) because of a waiver I qualified for due to time spent in the Flight Service option early on in my career but it's made walking away from this blessing of a career much more difficult than I anticipated. But I'm ready to be done now, or in no more than 350 days!

I'm going to try a helmet mount for my GoPro. So much of what I capture using my handlebar mount has to be discarded because of jerkiness from abrupt movement of the handlebars. I'll have very little of that to contend with using a helmet mount. There's the definite geek-factor I'll be playing into but my desire for better videos is winning out.

I know y'all can't wait!

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