It has now become my pride and joy I also purchased a new tripod/monopod head (it’s barely visible in the above shot) and a monopod.

My gear is now rounding out nicely. I’m going to put the rest of my tax return squarely on my student debts, so as to quickly beat them down.

After my spending spree I went hunting for something to shoot. My hunt took me through Logy Bay, Outer Cove, and Middle Cove. I found icebergs and animals to shoot at all those spots. The first iceberg that I found was at the marine lab in Logy Bay. It’s shape reminds me of a cruise ship.

Here are a few shots from today:

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

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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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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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

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

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

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

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