How to fill time in retirement

 As a rule, most of my photos are of flora and fauna and food and occasionally, family and friends. Taking pictures of people occurs and I wanted to try out the capabilities of my camera doing just that. So here are my initial assessments of the Canon R7. The user's guide that came with the camera had just the basics on camera operation, and a more extensive manual can be found online. To start, I have been using the "Automatic" mode of operation. My friend Philine took this photo of me. She said the focal point was on my eyes, one at a time. She took both shots but I have included only one since they were very similar, my big stomach being the true focal point... We were visiting friends in Satellite Beach. We walked from their house to Long Dogger's on South Patrick Drive. What was interesting about this shot was the sun was very bright behind them. Usually this darkens the faces of the people but the camera seemed smart enough to adjust for this bad lighting. Emy a...

 I am continuing my quest to read 36 books in 2024. I am 2 books ahead of schedule by finishing five more books for a total of ten. Of the new five, two are from my bucket list. Four of the books were fiction and only one was non-fiction. So here they are: #6 The Shadow of the Wind Written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, this book came out in 2001. I give the book a 4.0 (Excellent). This is now book  number 66 on my bucket list. It was number 56 on the original list I created and I am very happy to finally have read it. What a wonderful book. The story was written in Spanish and has been translated to English by Lucia Graves. It has many levels of suspense and subplots. I highly recommend it. I also see that Zafon has two more books to make a trilogy, The Angel's Game , and The Prisoner of Heaven . I have already added them to my Goodreads Must Read List . #7 Driving Blind Written by Ray Bradbury, this book came out in 1997. I give this book a 2.0 (Good). A paperback that ...

My current camera, a Canon 70D, a DSLR, was approaching 10 years old and I was starting to have problems with it. So I decided I would start looking for a new camera. The Internet is a wonderful place to research, but like the book I read in High School titled Future Shock , there are just too many choices. Our local Camera store, Southern Photo, closed about 8 tears ago and the closest is in Orlando. I ended up buying a new Canon R7 at Best Buy. Even that was an adventure. The camera was in store, but they want you to use your phone to read a QR code and that said I could pick it up in 3 days in Orlando, but the camera was in front of me. Realizing the phone used an Orlando Zip code, I changed it to Melbourne 32935 and it said I could pick it up in an hour. But I was standing next to the camera in a locked case. I finally found a blue shirt Best Buy employee and was able have him get the camera. Technology is becoming a pain... Here is the first picture I took with the new Mirrorless ...

 Trying to organize my digital photo hoard is similar to herding cats, it seems like it is doable until you start to do it. As a Math/Stat guy, I like to group the photos into simple categories, like I have tried to do in this post. But there is always so much overlap. If I try to look for something, like a sign, I realize that I should have organized them by subject. In this small post I decided on four categories: Personal, Tee shirts, Signs, and Words. But one of the photos I put in signs was actually a personal one. So I moved it. But it really belongs in both...But, I only want one copy of each file... I really want Fifth Normal Form, aka 5NF . Look it up! Haha. Personal This first photo is a personal one that was in a newspaper when I was in high school. I was in the school play and I was with my friends Ted and Dick. But it has words in the captions so should I move it to Words ? This is a personal photo of my friend Jose at work, testing something on a vehicle that flies. I...