On my way to see Anthony's first ski experience earlier in the month, I stopped by the Shirohige Shrine on the waters of Lake Biwa, in Takashima Japan, to take a few pictures. I posted a "washed out" picture of the shrine's main gate in the middle of the water that I'll repeat here:

I really like the washed-out effect in this shot, even though it's the exact opposite of what I generally try to get. I usually try to get the sunburst streaming in, like in these shots from my blog archive: Kouri Island (Okinawa) and Midwest America (Ohio) [...]

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A couple of weeks ago I posted Lightroom Plugin Development: What To Do When a Hobby Becomes Work, a long missive about the weight that Lightroom plugin development has taken on me.... how something that I intrinsically enjoy has become, in part, a chore. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and encouragement, both online and off.

I've decided to take the route that I speculated I would take, and that many encouraged me to take: Tim Armes' "donationware" model.

(The stack of unanswered email and comments has only grown while I've concentrated on implementing this system, so I've [...]

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It's coming.... an event of monumental proportions.

A once in a lifetime happening. Literally. It will happen once, and never again.

It happens in a few days.... here is the moment in various timezones around the world:

Honolulu Friday, Feb 13 at 1:31:30pm Anchorage Friday, Feb 13 at 2:31:30pm San Francisco   Friday, Feb 13 at 3:31:30pm Calgary Friday, Feb 13 at 4:31:30pm New York Friday, Feb 13 at 6:31:30pm La Paz Friday, Feb 13 at 7:31:30pm Sao Paulo Friday, Feb 13 at 9:31:30pm London Friday, Feb 13 at 11:31:30pm Berlin Saturday, Feb 14 at 12:31:30am Athens Saturday, Feb 14 at 1:31:30am [...]
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I do a lot of Lightroom-related development. I don't get paid for it, but I'm a geek and I really enjoy it.

In case you're familiar with Lightroom, but not with what I've provided, here's a bit about what I've done...

Well, that's enough of tooting one's own horn... you get the picture.

I don't actually use most of these personally, and I don't get paid for them; I work on them because I enjoy it. I enjoy creating useful stuff, I enjoy that people use the useful stuff I've created, and I enjoy the warm fuzzy feelings that people [...]
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I've long loved Google Maps, and especially with my travels and photo geoencoding, I often use it to further explore a place I've already visited in person.

For years, though, I wondered why a distance-measurement feature was not included, since that would seem one of the first enhancements that would come to mind. I eventually created a simple distance-measurement tool myself, adding it to my online exif tool, so that when you use it to view the data for a geoencoded image, you can measure distances from the photo spot (here's an example). Still, my solution was less than ideal [...]

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