Things done during a power outage

So, entering the actual month of June … this is why I should (never again) allow for journaling material to pile up. I’ve figured out a way to tell it all rather quickly. And it’s for the best interest of both this blog and my patience that I be hasty with this, seeing as this month didn’t start as well as it could have, given how May was nice … in comparison.

June 1st brings about the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season, but it also brought along a string of power outages, and a couple of significant blackouts. And the month isn’t over yet, so, while a 27-hour blackout may be hard to top, I consider that the power company is up to the challenge of leaving us two whole days without electricity. This post isn’t about that blackout in particular (which happened on the 5th), but a power outage that took place on the 1st, and one that is very short in comparison.

It was a Monday, so I didn’t have to go to class or do anything at all. Our backup power (inverter and batteries) runs out rather quickly, so there’s not much I can do at home during an outage. Wanting to take advantage of the fact that I really, truly had nothing else to do, I grabbed the camera and began snapping away. I’ve been having some problems with it, as it’s not always metering as well as it used to, resulting in overexposed (too bright!) or underexposed (too dark!) photos. It doesn’t always happen, but I have yet to figure out what’s wrong with it.

While Leoni took care of my nephew, I was going back and forth between the living room and the patio, and everything in between. After some photos, I got tired and decided to capture something different. I went out through the back exit to the area behind the main stairwell and the stairwell that leads to the roof, and pointed up at the visible sky. Some good shots were made, but aren’t shown here (that will be on a later post). I eventually got tired, having fulfilled my daily quota of photography, and sat down on the couch.

The power finally came back at around 6:00 p.m., and that was the end of … that. Little did I know that something of the same nature, but much worse, was going to happen just later in the week. Check back later for that one.

A week heavy in rain

Oh, look … it’s a new post! I was originally going to write something the day after I posted that, uh … poster, but I couldn’t stop thinking about college work that I had to do for this long, long three-day week that has finally passed. Better late than never, I guess. So, here goes …

Last Sunday was the belated birthday party for my nephew. His actual birthday was on the 12th, but that was a weekday and all they did for him was buy a chocolate cake he didn’t actually get to eat (great cake, by the way). So, they saved it all for Sunday, making preparations and sending invitations to family and friends. I didn’t bother asking about who got invited and who wasn’t, as I’m not a fan of parties. I had no choice but to attend, with it taking place here and all.

Sunday came, and my mother and sister prepared a massive amount of sancocho. Sancocho is a traditional stew common to most of Latin America, with regional variations for every country. My mother makes a great one. A lot of it was required for this day, as part of my nephew’s father’s side of the family would attend the party. I know so little about them … but there they were.

There were about sixteen people in all. I was in charge of the camera, as usual (because I need something to do so as to not bore myself to death in these situations) and I just sat around, fiddling with the camera and looking at photos made by others. The sancocho was as good as I expected it to be, so I had a second serving. The cake was … okay. It was filled with dulce de leche, another traditional thing of ours. As you can see, it has a sports theme to it, as most of the baby’s presents turned out to have. Aside from the usual noise-makers, diapers and a couple of other things, there was a baseball theme to all the clothing he got. At one point, I asked What’s going on here?

That was Sunday. Ever since then, it hasn’t stopped raining. Monday was free, of course, but my mind was on college work. It’s not much work but I don’t like going to class empty-handed. I managed to do half the work for Tuesday (because I don’t know how to make a budget for relaunching a hotel).

The graphic design class on Wednesday seemed longer than it actually was, because I kept staring at the window, which would light up every now and then with the storm outside. While I did turn in my homework, the project I had in mind (which spans the whole term) has been changed from something general and global to something local and specific. Doing research about this country is not something that I like, particularly because the information is very scattered and often insufficient. Luckily for that day. and because the lightning was constant and the rain remained heavy, I managed to catch a ride home. I would well have liked to walk in the rain and sing like Gene Kelly (yeah, right), but that’ll be another time.

The same research issue goes for the seminar class from Thursday. I’m still not sure what we’re going to do about that. What I do know is that I couldn’t attend class yesterday because of the rain. It started raining heavily about half an hour before I was supposed to go to class, and I thought it would stop right away. But, I took my time getting ready and the rain didn’t stop. I haven’t willingly failed to attend a class in a long time and, even though I don’t like it there, I hate being out of the loop and having to catch up. Also, there’s an attendance quota and I wouldn’t want to fail because of that.

As I had no one to drive me there, there was no way to go by public transport without getting wet, and the cab service is rather expensive (considering that this is a class that may or may not last the whole two hours it is supposed to, as was the case last week), I decided not to go. I first sent text messages to the other two in my group telling them that I would probably be late. As the first of the two hours continued to pass, I told them I wouldn’t be able to go and that they should decide what we would do for next class.

After the class was supposed to end (7:00), I sent more messages to see what had happened. They said they’d catch me up through instant messaging, and that has yet to happen. I’ll have to see about that.

Now, the long weekend awaits. The night before last, I woke up early with a great idea for new Blender work. While it’s not an animation (and I would like to get one done before this year ends), it’s a great concept, or at least I think it is. I have yet to sketch it to get a clear picture of what it will be, though. While I regain my motivation so I can grab that sketchbook and draw stuff, I’ll just sit here and finish reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Nice little book.

Oh, right. My camera seems to be dying. It’s not my camera, as I didn’t pay for it, but I use it more than everyone else combined. I turn it on and it goes off right away. Could be a battery issue, but it’s having that problem even with fully charged batteries. Finally, an excuse to get a better camera?

Pictures and words

By popular request (well, one person requested it), here’s yet another post. There’s just one problem: I’ve got nothing good to write about. But, even without the request, I didn’t want ten days to go by without a new post.

So, without further ado, here’s a random photo post by yours truly.

These, above and below, were taken on the 16th, the same day as that panoramic photo. I had little to do, earlier in the day, so I just took a bunch of plant close-ups. I was also testing how to get shallower depth of field using my point & shoot camera after having read about it the day before.

These other ones were taken today yesterday. These are more random than the above. I had installed CHDK on my camera, and I was testing it everywhere. Other than manual control of shutter speed and being able to use optical zoom for video recordings, I haven’t gained much benefits from this upgrade. I was hoping for manual aperture control (my primary reason for installing this firmware), but turns out the camera doesn’t have an iris diaphragm. Just an internal ND filter which I can now control, but still not good for long exposures in daylight. Oh, well.

In the afternoon, I was watching this rather sad documentary called The Last Days of Left Eye. It’s rather depressing, because she had so many plans for the future, and her life was cut short by a car accident. What I didn’t know when I first heard the news that she died, is that she was filming a documentary about her life, and much less that there was actual footage of the moment when she died. I knew little about her until this moment (I just liked TLC’s music!) and, after watching that, it feels a bit as if I had met her personally.

At night, there was a power outage. Didn’t last long, but I got bored and sat on the balcony, still taking photos. It was very dark outside, and I could only see the lights coming from the house in front (pictured above). I spent the whole time taking long exposures.

By the way, a couple of photos weren’t going to make it into this post. Some, like that first remote control one and the long exposures, were far too noisy (evil chroma noise, see here to learn what that is). Thanks to the magic of the wavelet denoise plugin for GIMP, I was able to get rid of the noise while leaving details untouched. Anyway …

This post should be enough proof that I’m still around. It’s a long weekend that has yet to end. Today is the day of Juan Pablo Duarte (the nation’s forefather), and I’ve done some serious procrastination. I’ve got quite a lot of work to do for this week, and I spent the last two days doing pretty much nothing (I’m good at that). Better get an early start tomorrow later today if I want to get things done!