Parts of Ohio have been having heavy rain and flooding lately, although where we are it's been sunny and hot for the last few days. We did get pounded with very heavy rains over the weekend and Monday. Yesterday, I happened to notice the effects from those rains in the play sandpile.

When we first arrived a month ago, Dad dumped a few bags of play sand for Anthony to play, but the heavy rains totally flattened the pile....

Each of the bazillion rain drops splashed up a bit of sand when it hit, and sometimes that sand got stuck [...]

I recently wrote about the pro-caliber tripod I put together with components from Gitzo and Really Right Stuff. This time I'm writing about a monopod that I put together at the same time. However, unlike the tripod, it took two tries to get a good monopod solution, and at that, I'm still not 100% happy with it.

Update: I made some changes, described in updates below, and now I'm happy with it.

I had no problem with the monopod leg itself, a Gitzo GM3550 6X Carbon Fiber 5 Section G-Lock Monopod. It's got the G-Lock section logs that [...]

As I mentioned the other day, my sister Marci is visiting my folks' with her 17-month-old son, Josh, for the last week that Anthony and I are here, and for another week after to help ease my parents' empty-nest feeling.

Yesterday we made the half-hour drive to a particularly bleak part of the world called the Alliance Amtrak Station. The station itself was like a run-down bus stop in the most desolate area of town, but it had one great thing going for it: trains.

The "station" (if you could call it that -- it's just a slab of asphalt [...]

Two years after introducing the D200, Nikon today announced its successor, the Nikon D300, and also the latest in its pro line, the full-frame $5,000 Nikon D3.

As I expected of any Nikon new-body announcement, this is really a no-win situation for me. Either the new camera is good enough that I'm left feeling relatively disappointed in my Nikon D200, or the new camera is pedestrian enough that I'm left disappointed in Nikon.

After reading the above-linked previews on Digital Photography Review, the drool on my keyboard is telling me the result. 🙂

In the "D200 vs. D300" specification comparison [...]
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My sister Marci drove up with her 17-month-old (Josh) to join us for our last week in Ohio. While Anthony was at school yesterday, the rest of us went out to a restaurant for lunch. Without Anthony to keep my hands full, I tried to help a bit with Josh, who was being somewhat of a handful. In the middle of both of us trying to give him some chicken noodle soup, I had a realization that I could put to good use.

Me: Hey Marci, I just thought of something that will really gross you out!

Marci gets this [...]
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