Jmilley.com

Rain Drizzle and Fog

This has been a very typical spring for St. John’s, which means Cold and Wet. Myself and a couple friends (Brian Kidney, and Geoff Holden ) tried to do a little photography yesterday, in the west end of the city (where we work) is was beautifull… when we got to the east end it was blanketed in fog. I got a few shots, however nothing spectacular… We were going to try again today, but the fog is there again.

Here is the album of three shots from yesterday:

Hopefully more photography will happen on the weekend, it’s supposed to be nice on Saturday.

Jon

As of yet I haven’t had much of an opportunity to get out doing any photography this winter, my last serious outing was late fall just as things were starting to freeze. Last weekend I was out in Kings Cove (in Bonavista Bay), Newfoundland visiting, and spent a couple hours driving around and shooting. I need to make myself find the time to sit down with the computer and plug away at the images and post the good ones.

We’ve had a very snowy winter, and on the weekends it’s hard to get the weather just right to get out the camera. Of course week days are a write off since it’s dark when I get home.

I went to Camera 35 the other week with Brian Kidney and Geoff Holden and enjoyed myself. Camera 35 is a photography club that holds it’s meetings on the MUN campus. Actually they’ve now got a fairly permanent arrangement with the School of Medicine to use a class room in the basement of the Health Science Centre. I think I’ll probably join, bring some of my photos to get some feedback…

Look for new photo galleries to be posted in the next couple weeks… I need to clean up my home office, and then I’ll tackle “cleaning up” the digital side of things

Jon

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Managing and organizing media in such a way to make it useful has always been a tricky situation.  Having my music and videos accessible away from my PC has always been a big hassle.  Either you burned the video to DVD (a lengthy process) or hooked a computer to the TV (a hassle).  Playing back my music without having to put CD’s in the machine either involved hooking an MP3 player to the TV, or using the DVD player to play back a CD full of songs. Now I’ve changed the way I do things, and I’m currently pretty happy with my multimedia setup. 

I have a decent TV (32″ I think) that works well for the size of room I have, and I use a Logitech sound system that I originally purchased as computer speakers (a 4.1 system) that has good enough sound.  For playback now I use an Xbox running XBMC, the Xbox Media Centre.  This application can pull media from multiple sources, including windows file shares.  In my office I have a desktop machine that acts as my server.  I currently have close to 750gigs of storage, and it is slowly filling up with TV shows and ripped albums/movies.  This is more than 6000 times the hard drive capacity of my first PC, some 15 years ago.

Now since I work in an office at a computer all day I’d like to have access to my music collection, without having to duplicate it on my work computer, or dragging around external devices.  I was recently turned onto Slim Devices (recently purchased by Logitech) Slim Server and Squeezebox devices.   The Slim Server runs on the machine that stores your Media, and the Squeezebox is a hardware device that connects to your network and streams the music to your stereo.  The Squeezebox can control your music, and let you search,etc.  If you don’t have one of these hardware devices you can download the SoftSqueeze program that emulates the Device on a PC.

So at work I run SoftSqueeze, point it to my home server (through a dynamic DNS address) and stream my music to wherever I am.  It sounds great, and I have no issues with skipping, etc.

The only thing I need to figure out now is how to efficiently rip my DVD’s to the computer so I can play them back at acceptable quality without using all the harddrive space for just a few movies.

Computers are becoming more and more a part of every second of everyday…  It’s amazing how much advancements have come in the last 15 years or so.

Jon

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Well, just a quick update post to say I’m now going to run my website just as a blog… I guess thats it, been sick the last few days and this is the first productive thing I’ve done in days.

We started watching Heroes, we watched the entire first season in a few days. I bought an xbox a couple weeks back… XBMC is a god send

Later,

Jon

Got my Business Card preview today… It’s soon going to be Official, I’m a Software Engineer!

So much has happened since I last wrote anything… My days as a camera store employee, construction labourer, being a bachelor and using the Metrobus are over. Actually most of that happened in the last couple weeks.

Myself and Jessica got married on August 4th, after about 18 months of engagement… that went well and we had great time, I’ll be posting photographs as soon as I get a moment. Several weeks before that we found out I got a new job, a career actually, at Stratos Global Communications. I’m actually a Software Engineer now. So since that was starting this week, we knew we needed a car to get back and forth to Donovans where my job is, etc. Jessica’s parents were awesome and loaned us (which is now payed off) the money to purchase our first car, a 1997 Mazda 626.

So long story short life is coming at me very fast.

The new job is great so far, just had my first couple days and I’ve been doing the typical getting settled in things, getting my computer set up, phone, keys, etc. and of course trying to figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I’ll let you know if and when that happens

So things are progressing nicely, we can actually start thinking about making concrete plans for when she graduates next spring. We’re no longer hanging on unknowns. I’m still hoping to finish my Masters program, and Jessica wants to start hers as soon as she can. We might be in the market for our first house once Jessica gets a full time Job after graduation. Who knows what the future holds, but I’m happy with the present.

I’m still doing some camera work on the Side, right now I’m working two photography gigs, cluing up the Tely 10 road race photos, getting orders sorted, etc. and just this evening we started shooting the H.O.G. Rally for the Harley motorcycle owners group. It should be a fun weekend.

So, this was a big post for me, hopefully I can get the motivation to continue this

Life is moving on, work is going well, I’m teaching every second Saturday. This is Jessica’s birthday weekend, the big Two Five tomorrow. We’re going to Montanas this evening with her Parents, should be interesting anyway.

Thursday myself, Dave, Hanz and Leigh went out to Boston Pizza. Just hanging out and shooting the shit.

We went out Friday with the gang, hung out at Dave’s place for a while and then headed down to O’Reillys for a while, met up with some more souls there. It was fun times, decent music and good beer. After that we headed over to the Celtic Hearth for some late night grub. Little bit of a hangover Saturday, made the first hour or so of work annoying.

I’m dreaming up some ideas for projects to take on… I’d like to come up with a commercially viable idea. I’m bouncing one around my head for a wireless device. I’m going to look at starting a photography business as well.

On another note, is anyone looking for an energetic cat? Guiness is driving us nuts. She comes with everything you need.

More to come.

Jon

So we’re finalizing the plans for the wedding, August 4th, 2007 at 2pm at Gower St. United. This past week or so we’ve got the bridesmaids dresses picked (I had very little to do with this) and the flowers… next it’s the cake and the invitations.

Gotta finalize my half of the guest list for sending out invitations now, should be fun…

I’ve just finished editing the photos from my latest photo shoot with The Neighbourhood Strays , a belly dance troupe whos members include friends of mine. Jenn asked me to do the shoot for their upcoming website redesign. I’ll be posting some photos soon.

I want to start doing more work like that. I got to get my portfolio filled up and get something on the go with that.

Well thats it for now,

Later,

Jon

So it’s now 2007, and this promises to be a big year. It’s now less than 7 months to my wedding day (August 4th) and the plans are coming a long swimmingly…

Christmas was good, even though the holiday was brief. We spent our first Christmas together at Jessica’s parents home. It was a good day, but a little strange not being with my own family. Then on Wrestling Day (Boxing Day I mean) we drove to Grand Falls to see my family. On the 27th we drove to Pasadena to see my Grand Parents, and then to Burlington for a breif visit with Jessica’s Dad’s parents. That was a lot of driving, but it was good to see my Nan who broke her hip a few weeks before Christmas, and it was good to meet Stan and Marie (Jess’ Grand Parents). Then the 28th we drove back to St. John’s because Jessica had to work.

For New Years we went out to a friends place in Topsail… Amazing house, and great times with friends… Photos here : http://picasaweb.google.com/jmilley/NewYearsNicks

I’m working on upgrades to my website and looking at setting up a photography business on the side. For the moment I’m working part time at Newfoundland Camera, I’ve been selling cameras (and accessories, and developement, etc.). Soon I’m going to be teaching classes in beginning digital photography.

Heres a list of the websites that are being really helpfull in my exploration of photography:

• http://www.dpreview.com — Great camera reviews and discussion forums.
• http://www.nikonians.org — discussion forums, articles, etc. excellent resource
• http://www.bythom.com — Pro Photographer, reviews, articles, etc.
• http://www.strobist.com — The bible of Off Camera Lighting (small strobes) (with discussion forum)
• http://www.photographytips.com — Lots of articles on various topics
• http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech.htm — Pro Photographer, tech tips, reviews, etc. (take some of with a grain of NaCl)

Thats a few… of course Google is the best resource…

More updates later…

Check out http://jonmilley.com for more business info.

Jon

Old entry I forgot to post:

So, I’m in Grand Falls - Windsor right now writing this… Missing Jessica who isn’t joining me till Saturday here. But first I’ll back track the story a few weeks…

So 4 weeks (or so) ago I started to feel a cold/flu coming on. I developed all the classic flu symptoms and figured going to the doctor was just going to end with me getting antibiotics that I (mistakenly) thought I did not need. 2 weeks later I’m still suffering with it and it’s affecting my school work, my personal life, professional life, etc. Then one day I wake up with a 100x worse sore throat and I cannot eat, it hurt (alot) to drink even water. So I went to the nearest open clinic and saw a young doctor who said strep throat, 4-5 days with these antibiotics and your be fine.

Two days later that was not the case. I was worse (alot worse) friday evening and I went back to the clinic, but it was really really slow (not one patient came out or went in for more than a few miniutes, and I got fed up and left) next morning I’m there waiting for it to open and get a perscription for different antibiotic and then they never worked.

By Sunday after 4 days of eating a very liquid diet and being sick I was much sicker that I had been before.

So I went to the ER and long story short I was admitted to St. Claires where I stayed a week and ate much liquids.

My back has been aching a bit today, that has me worried… but it’ll force me to be more concious of it during the run up to the wedding.

Next on my update agenda is the back… It’s been acting up lately, not to the point of can’t handle school work for even 5 minutes, but since I’m THE photographer at the wedding (more later) this weekend I need to be in 100% condition. so tomorrow I’m paying (literally) a visit to my chiropractor.

So My Uncle Wayne and his fiance are getting married this weekend. Initially they had asked me to do the photos… At first I declined and said I didin’t have the gear (which I didn’t at the time) and they hired a “pro”. He ended up backing out a few months before the wedding cause he got accepted to the RCMP training program.

So the question came back to me about can I do it… I’d amassed a bunch of equipment of the the interveining months and I felt I could do it.

I’ll post more (and photos after the stress hangover is gone on Sunday.

More on the new apartment (columbus terrace on crosbie rd) in a later post.

Next friday I start a new job selling cameras at the local camera repair/sales shop. Just 2 shifts a week (friday and saturday). I might also have some christmas hours lined up at the other camera shop that could see me working as many as full time hours or more.

Our kitten guiness is so cute! heres a link to a small photo album.

Thats all for now!

Jon