"Beautiful" Blythe.

During my recent trip to California I spent the night in Blythe, CA.... below is the view from our hotel room right after a rain storm. The town itself isn't much to get excited but we did manage to find some great Mexican food at Maria's... although I was a bit disappointed that they didn't serve Margaritas the food more than made up for it.

Back in Action....

I've been having some technical difficulties over the past couple weeks with Blogger. I wasn't able to upload photos, publish new posts, etc... things seem to be back to normal so I'll be up to my normal posting again.

Cloudy mountain range somewhere in between Phoenix and Los Angeles.

HDR of downtown Phoenix...

Took this photo at dusk, with no tripod, using exposure bracketing. Merged three photos together in Photomatix, did some tonal mapping and ended up with a pretty decent High Dynamic Range photo.... more on this process later.

Follow the photo for a larger version....

Half Dome, Yosemite

Review: Dock Dividers for Mac OS X

I've got more than a handful of applications that I regularly need to open, in turn my dock got to the point were it was overwhelming to even look at. Yea, I kept it in some sort of order so I could easily find most things but I always wanted it to be a bit more organized.

In comes Google, naturally. I stroke in "dock divider" and to my surprise Apple downloads was first on the list with an App appropriately named Dock Dividers 1.0...Why have I never heard of this?! Its Freeware and the file size is ~160kb so I hit the download button without much hesitation.

Unpack your new 'program'... You'll end up with a folder which has the dividers and a help file. Basically the dividers are each their own little application, which makes sense because you can just drag and drop them like you would any other application... but it also made me wonder if these extra apps would cause any problems if they were accidentally executed.

Thankfully the dock dividers work pretty seamlessly. If you click on one by accident it'll bounce around for a minute then stop, not of any annoyance or concern. Additionally these mini-applications are mini in size too, and don't impact the performance of your machine in any way... did I mention they look good !?


I've got most everything in some sort of order, and the dividers allow me to group applications, making choosing the right app without wasting any time an easy task, plus I think it looks a little less cluttered.

Dock Dividers 1.0 Download

This is a must have application in my book, go get it!

Full Screen Shot :

Fishing for Dinner...

Not sure that I would actually eat any thing that came out of this lake but the guy pictured below seemed to get quite a few bites in the short time I was watching him... mmmm Tempe Town Lake trout anyone?!

Town Lake of Tempe...

Went out with some photography students over the weekend and managed to take a couple shots of my own.

Here's one overlooking Tempe town lake and some real fancy looking buildings.

PNY ESata Express Card and WD Mybook on Mac Book Pro....

My Mac Book Pro has an express card slot, and my Western Digital MyBook 500GB Hard Drive has an Esata Cable connection.... lets take a look at what these two features are and how they can be combined to provide for some pretty impressive transfer speeds.

Things you'll need:
ESata Cable
Esata Expresscard(Unless of course your computer has an Esata port built-in)
Hard Drive with Esata connection

Just like any other piece of technology, you can find Esata Express Cards at many different resellers and there are a number of available brands. They range anywhere from $15-$100(and probably more in some cases). Being that I'm forced to eat Top Ramen 6 days out of the week, I opted for the cheapest card I could find - The PNY Express Card eSata II - 2 Port. I purchased this card(pictured below) for $20 at a local Best Buy - happened to be the last one on the shelf, not a regularly stocked item according to the salesperson.


The packaging is VERY misleading. It says absolutley nothing about being compatible with Mac OS X and lists system requirements as being Windows XP or Vista only. Thats a 'lie'... In fact the included CD comes with a driver - in a folder labeled as being Mac OS X. Why they don't note this on the packaging is beyond me. (Alternatively the driver is available at Silicon Image's site.) The driver from SI and the driver that comes on the PNY CD are exactly the same! I would recommend checking SI's site just in case they update the software and release a new version though.

If you are running OS X 10.5.1 its ideal that you upgrade to 10.5.2 as Apple has made some changes which effect how the express card slot and corresponding device(s) communicate. If you've already got 10.5.1 upgrading to 10.5.2 will be free as its just an updat e- not an upgrade. This is not completely necessary but I highly suggest it. If you are unsure as to what OS you've got click on the Apple in the upper left hand portion of your screen and click on "About this Mac...", A dialog box will pop up and tell you what OS version you've got. Additionally, on the same Apple menu if you click 'Software Update' it will allow you to view and install the latest updates.

As of February 2008 Western Digital released an updated driver for the MyBook Hard Drives that address some compatibility issues with Leopard. In short, people who were using eSata connections were getting transfer speeds comparable to USB 2.0. The new driver patches this problem and is available for free download from their site. Click here for Driver. NOTE: not all hard driver manufactures have updated drivers avaliable. If you are having problems and not using a WD drive check the maker's site for new drivers or Google it

Okay, now that we've got our driver's up-to-date we are ready to start plugging hardware in. Slide the Express Card into its corresponding slot on your Macbook Pro. (Left side of the computer, oval shaped opening with a door that flips down.)

Push the card all the way in, it will click into place - (To remove the card press it inward and it will release, allowing you to pull it back out - Remember to power the card off before removing!)

With your card inserted you'll notice a little icon pop-up on your top toolbar tray(next to the time/battery info/etc). Click on it and it should read something similar to: "Silicon Image, Sil 3132 Satalink controller", and gives you an option to power it down. If it says 'unknown' you need to reinstall your driver or check to make sure that you've got the latest version.

Now you can plug your Esata cable in- I also purchased this item from Best Buy, for about $10 , also PNY brand, 6' long- to the back of your Hard Drive. The cable only goes in one way. Once you've got it hooked up to your Hard Drive, you can plug the other end into your express card, either slot will work.

Your Hard Drive should power up once you've plugged in the Esata cable, if it doesn't just turn it on manually.

Thats it! If you've got the correct software installed and the connections snug you're ready to start getting some real use out of your hard drive.

What good would it be if I just posted pictures and wrote about how cool this eSata/Express Card combo is? Probably not very... So I've bench tested the new setup and also tested a few other storage devices(labeled accordingly in image below).

The results are pretty self-explanatory(click image for larger view). Its like using a completely different Hard Drive, quieter than it was before and the speed is outstanding. Browsing folders with lots of pictures/videos/etc - even in 'cover-flow' style finder - is just amazing. Night and day difference and makes backing up and archiving a quick task. ... of course it works awesome with time machine in case you were wondering! -(Click here See how I partition the same HD for use with two mac's - both running time machine)

Well worth the ~$30, not to mention Best Buy came in handy for once!

Please feel free to leave comments, questions and suggestions.

IS () it?

Follow the picture for a wallpaper version.

A Subaru and a Train....

Shot this photo a while back and tried some new post-processing in photoshop... Didnt get it quite where I wanted it but it came close. Follow the photo for a 1024 X 768 version.

E46 Wallpaper...

Edited this photo today and thought I would share... makes a decent wallpaper, click the photo for a high resolution version. (well 1024 X768 anyway...) ... New website is up, thus a lack of updates latley but hopeully that will change soon!