Spring Break

Well, like the fools we are, we headed north for spring break. Sure, we could have gone to the beach as a practice run for the big beach trip later this summer. We could have stayed in Knoxville and enjoyed the beautiful 70 degree weather and watched all of the flowers start to bloom. In stead, we decided to head north about 700 miles in search of cooler, wetter weather. Well, that and good company.

We got to Roscoe Tuesday night and after an uneventful and relatively traffic free drive north we got there about 9:30pm. Wednesday, was a wet and rainy day so we took the kids to Bridge to Terabithia. The movie is very good and we all enjoyed it. A bit sad, but a good story and definitely worth watching for the young and old.



Later that night, Jen drove down but was toting her notebook computer (well, not really hers, but her company's-see her blog for what happened to her computer) as she was not on vacation, but was going to tele-work for a few days. Unfortunately, Pops' spring break won't start until next week, so he too has work during the day.

Thursday, we went to the local skate park and Nick got to skateboard for about an hour and practice a few of his stunts. It was too bad it was a bit windy and cool, otherwise we might have stayed and skated for hours. As it was, he skated a bit and we played for a while in the park with Sarah. After an hour of playing chase, it was time to head to the house and get warm.

Friday and Saturday were both good days. We played outdoors quite a bit and it actually almost got warm. We played some football, baseball and just goofed around. Friday night we had Tom and Sally over for dinner and relatively quiet birthday celebration for Sarah. She and Grandma Roey and baked and decorated it earlier in the day and I must say it looked and tasted great.

Saturday was more fun outdoors. Nick played for a while at Tanner's house and I know he enjoyed playing with someone near his own age. He also enjoyed playing Tanner's PS3. Saturday night we went to a Japanese Restaurant; the kind of place where the cook the food in front of you. Jen ordered some wierd sushi, including eel, but I managed not to look to disgusted and didn't barf on her order.



All in all, we had a great time and played a lot of Blockus, Aggravation and even taught Nick how to play Push. He loves the idea of being able to win money. We also ate well courtesy of Grandma Roey and Pop's cooking. I'll post some pictures of the trip soon.

March 14, 2007 The Arrival of the Printing Beast

I recently received an Epson 3800 medium format printer. If you are not into photography or printing, you might want to skip this blog entry. It might get a bit geeky, boring and lame if you are not a serious photo junky.

I have been getting paid for taking pictures part time for a couple of years now and have struggled with the best way to get the images to the customer. At the beginning, I was printing at home on my Canon i9100 and i960 inkjet printers. The problem with these printers is that they use dye ink. Now, the dye inks give wonderful, vibrant images, but at the expense of fading. Pigment inks give longevity on par with and sometimes exceeding traditional lab prints, but for years, pigment inks could not produce the same vibrant images and the pigment printers were prone to clogging. So, I decided it might be easier to outsource my professional printing needs and online labs like mpix.com got the bulk of my business. I was not entirely happy with this process though, as it took some of the control out of my hands and ate into my profits.

Then Epson launched the 3800. Epson promised, and reviews seemed to confirm, that the new inkset in this printer, the K3 Ultrachrome Inks, are as vibrant as dye and are virtually clog free. So, when I had a chance to put some of my profits back into my business, I ordered the 3800.

The 3800 is capable of printing up to 17 inches wide and 37 inches long (and longer if you want to buy the Imageprint RIP--but at $800 I'll pass for now). Thus, at 17 inches wide, it is not really a wide format printer, which generally are able to print 24" or wider, so I would call it a medium format printer.

Bottom line on the printer is that I would highly recommend it for anyone who wants to print seriously nice images at home and want to make big prints.

The printer is a beast and like all printers, it arrives with about 1000 pieces of blue tape holding down all it various parts to avoid shippng damage due to any unwanted movement and your challenge is to find them all and remove them. That was actually harder than installing the software and getting my first print.

The printer houses 9 ink cartridges that each hold 80 ml of ink. Since most inkjet cartridges hold about 10-13 ml of ink, you can see that this baby holds a lot of ink. At about $50/cartridge, they are not cheap, but they are more economical than the smaller cartridges. How much can you print with these cartridges before you have to ante up and buy more? Apparently quite a bit.

I had a job to print about 60 12x18 posters for a local middle school and in addition to those posters, I've printed a dozen or s0 8 1/2 x 11 images and a few 8 x 10, 5 x7's, etc and two ink cartridges now report about 25-35% remaining and the rest of them show more than 75% remaining. This, despite reports that there is a significant amount of ink drawn out of the cartridges when you first start up the printer to prime the lines that run from the cartridge to the print head. So, it looks like I will be able to print quite a bit before I have to buy more ink.

The image quality is superb and definitely rivals anything my i960 or i9100 could produce. The printer ships with about 10 sheets of Epson's highly acclaimed premium luster paper and it is very nice. In fact, I've ordered 25 sheets of this paper in the 17 x 22 size to make some gorgeos 16 x 20 prints. The Epson standard profile for this paper is very good and what I see on my screen is what I get in the print, which is exactly what you should get in a good, color-controlled workflow.

The luster paper is very similar to the Ultra Pro Satin (UPS) paper sold by redriverpaper.com. Redriver offer their own profile for the UPS paper, but I've found that simply using the Epson profile for their luster paper provide a more vibrant and more accurate color. I have ordered some additional sample papers to do some more experimentation with. I'll have to fill you in on how that goes at a later date.

One of the real disadvantages of the Canon printers have been their inability to produce good black and white images. Epson and HP have been including a few different shades of black and gray inks and this effort has really paid off. The 3800 holds 9 different ink cartridges and 4 of them hold black or gray ink. They are: Photo Black (for luster and gloss images), Light Black, Light Light Black and Matte Black (for matte prints). After printing my first B&W image, I can say that whatever Epson is doing, they are doing it right. The first print came out perfect. Not some almost B&W with a hint of blue or red that my Canon always produced.

I still want to print a few images on the 3800 and compare them with the same prints I made on the Canon printers so as I can do a direct comparison, but my first impression is that I will give the edge to Epson and if you factor in the fade factor, Canon will lose.

My neighbor's son plays for the local high school baseball team and since he is the booster in charge of tickets, he's given me a free season pass (Nick gets in free anyway) in exchange for some pix of his son and his teammates. I can't wait to show him a 16x20 of his son. He'll flip out. I am also anxious to do a couple of Nick and Sarah at that size.

Anyway, getting back to my workflow for getting the prints to the customer. I've started using Photoreflect's software to sell my pictures online. It works something like this:

1. I take images and create a web gallery with the Photoreflect software and upload images to their server.

2. Customer goes online, views pictures, buys pictures and submits order along with payment.

3. Photoreflect sends me the order.

4. I print and send the order.

5. Photoreflect sends me a check for the order minus their 15% commision (the software and image hosting are free).

By being able to print the customers images locally, I can do it as cheap as the online stores and can ensure quality control before delivery to the customer.

Now, if you don't want to pony up the cash for a large printer like this and don't really need to print large, you should look at the 3800's little brother, the 1400. But if you do a large volume of printing, the economics of the 3800 are a bit better.

Sarah Scores 5 Goals, Nick get 14 pts in Basketball finale

Sarah scored 5 goals in her spring season opening game in her AYSO U-6 team today. She was a powerhouse on the field and the most prolific scorer on the field today, despite only playing about 1/2 the game. I guess the coach pulled her as he did not want to beat up on the other team too bad. She clearly knows what she is doing out there and is much more focues than most of the other kids. She is not afraid to get in the middle of the action and mix things up.

The first picture here shows her scoring one of her 5 goals. I don't think I ever scored 5 goals in one game.

She loves to get right in the middle of the action.

She had the blue uniform on today and the pigtails. There was another girl there today in the white uniform with pigtails and at one point, Sarah looked at her as if sizing her up and thinking she is not going to stop me today.

Nick scored 14 points in the basketball season finale. Although he was somewhat intimidated by the kids in the rec league he played in, he felt much more confident in this church league and was not afraid to take shots. Even if he was not particularly open.

He was very intense last night, as he has been the last couple of weeks, chasing down each and every loose ball and getting a lot of rebounds. If they had been calling a close game, he might have fouled out. He had a blast and best of all, they won big and one of his best friends spent the night and watched his game.

His layup style is a bit unorthodox.

Here he is chasing down another loose ball...and getting to it first

Yes, basketball season is over for both of them now. They got their trophies last night and are happy. Now, we'll focus on baseball for nick, soccer and t-ball softball for Sarah, gymnastics for both and soccer for Tim.

March 7, 2007

The basement transformation is nearly done. Out went the puny 50" Hitachi Ultravision low def TV. In went the LCD HD Projector. Now showing at Halls Cinema on the 150" screen in 720p HD... whatever the kids want. Open Season, Cars, Ice Age II, The Wild, Monster House, The Aunt Bully, How to Eat Fried Worms and Madagascar all look great on the big screen The 7.1 surround sound is in and I just need to patch a "few" holes that were necessary to get all of the audio and video cables hidden in the ceiling. Yvonne was not too hot the idea of the projector to start with, but after watching a movie on the big screen, she has softened. She did not even squawk too much about all of the speakers going in.

The old Hitachi was great TV, but I had been hankering for a HD TV for quite some time and really could not justify spending 3 or more grand on a 70" TV. Then I started researching projectors. Really, our basement was designed for one. It is relatively dark, there are no view obstructing support columns and there is lots of space between the floors to run wire. The kind folks at www.projectorpeople.com sold me a nice Sanyo PLV-Z5 Projector. It is certainly not the best model out there, but it is quite nice and offers a lot of features for the price. There is even a $300 rebate on that model now.

It has been a bit of a chore running all the cabling and I've learned a few things along the way. If you are contemplating starting a similar project, let me know and I can tell you a few things I learned the hard way. Also, I had to buy a new DVD player that could output HD and a new reciever to do the 7.1. Of course there was the expense of getting Comcast to turn on the HD TV signals, but man, what a difference HD makes. Have you seen Discovery Channel's HD station. Holy Cow. What a picutre.



Here are some "Pros and Cons" of a projection system:

Pros

Pretty much as large of a pictures as you want and your wall will allow
Generally lower price than same size TV and you can't buy a 150" TV that I am aware of
Cleaner look of not having a huge TV in your room
Kids can't break the TV screen when a random ball fight breaks out in the basement
When I need to buy a new one in 10 years, I'll be able to remove the old one with in just a few minutes and no heavy lifting.

Cons

Projectors don't project audio, so you will need a separte sound system for the audio-butifyou are really doing a high-end TV, you'll be getting one anway.
Typically, need a light controlled environment
Bulb life probably not as long as TVs, but at least they are user changeable
Need to buy a screen or have a wall that is suitably colored and free of cosmetic imperfections
Projectors typically have fewer video inputs than TVs, so you'll probably need a receiver that can receive and feed multiple video sources.
More labor to install

March 5, 2007

A quick entry tonight as it is late. Nick had his first day of baseball practice tonight. Most of his friends from last year's team are on this year's team. His team should be a lot better this year and I think Nick has really improved since last year. I think he is good enough to play the infield now regularly and he will love to do that as there is a lot more action there than the outfield. Even a couple of the parents noticed tonight how much better he looks out there with his fielding and throwing. One parent said he even looks faster. I am not sure about that, though.

Sarah and I read some traditional fairy tales before bed tonight and she really enjoys them, especially Cinderella. Of course, being part tom-boy, she also wanted me to read her a Spiderman book. I am sure a bit of influence from older brother on that selection.

Well, its late tonight and I am beat. This life of late night practices is just as tough on the parents as it really cuts back on free time at the end of the day.

March 4, 2007

A quiet day for us in Halls today. We went to Betty and Todd's house today to celebrate Yvonne's dad's birthday along with Judy's birthday. Betty and Judy are Yvonne's sisters. Nick and Sarah like playing with Betty's kids, Conner and Allison, who at 12, and 16 respectively, are older, but play nicely with them.

I finally got around to converting a few of the images from Sarah's basketball game Friday night. As I said, I did not get a shot of her first points, but here is one of her minutes before.

Here is another picture of her that perhaps can give you a good idea of her relative size in comparison to the other girls in the league.

What's up in Halls?

Welcome to our new Blog. We heard everyone was doing it, so we had to try it too.

I'll try to add something of interest everyday, but there are no guarantees I'll be able to publish anything of interest to anyone but me.

So, it is Saturday, March 3, 2007. The kids both had birthday parties today at one of those places with inflatable bouncy-house things. Those places really wear out the kids. Nick had baseball tryouts and one of the coaches told me he was the 2nd pick overall. I am expecting to get his big signing bonus in the mail any day now.

Sarah will start playing soccer next week and Yvonne volunteered (read suckered) to help with the team again. I'll be on the sidelines taking pictures and taking Nick to his baseball games.

Both Nick and Sarah's basketball season will come to an end next week. Sarah has made a lot of progress this year despite being one of the smallest girls in the kindergarten to 3rd grade league. Under her coaches excellent leadership (Yeah, I got suckered into being her team's coach), she scored 4 points in last nights game. Because most of the girls tower over her, the entire stadium roared when she scored her 1st basket of the season. I was so stunned I could not press the shutter button, so no picture of her success.

Nick is becoming quite the basketball player. Fortunately, it appears his height genetics come from someone other than me and he might have a future in this sport. He is very competitive and is either grabbing the rebound or knocking someone down in an effort to get the rebound. I told him he gets 5 fouls and no use in not getting his money's worth.

I'll try to put up some pictures from when I was able to press the shutter button as soon as I figure out how.