Here are some of the photos, way too many more can be found on SmugMug

Normally I have a much higher good to bad ration when shooting, but because there was a lot of experimenting going on, and some of the photos were taken without a tripod to hold it steady, I only ended up with just over 20 that were any good after shooting about 80 different locations. But after all, it was a first attempt.

All processing was done in Aperture using the HDR Efex Pro plug-in (which also works with Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom).

Now that we have a little down time, some long overdue maintenance and cleaning started today. It’s amazing how much dust had built up in the rack, and especially in the RAID drive systems. It was so bad we had to roll the RAID systems outside to blow them out one drive module at a time.

I was also able to rework much of the first rack and remove things that we no longer use. We also had a battery backup unit that needed new batteries.

I have not taken as many photos as usual, and most of them are from my iPhone because that’s what I have when I’m out walking in the morning. The rest are on Flickr.

I wanted to get a much wider tire, so I also had to get different wheels, and if you’re going to get new wheels why not make them nice and shiny!

This is a before photo with the stock wheels/tires.

Location:Home

It’s a week of on-site translations for a video we did a few weeks ago. It’s being translated into 11 different languages.

In a word… Wow.

The first 2 hours of the class I was concerned that it may be a bit too basic for me. After all I had been reading a lot and what was covered I already knew. But that quickly changed and before I knew it I was having flashbacks to being in HS and was sweating. I could tell the people around me were “getting it” a bit faster and had more experience. I was falling behind and fast!

I took a short lunch and came back early to keep working and by the end of the class I was caught up. I’m used to being the most technical person in the room, but here I’m probably the least educated on the topic. I think it’s been a long time since my brain really felt stressed stretched like this.

But, I have a few hours tonight to brush up on what we did today, and tomorrow I’m getting up early to read ahead in the next few chapters so that I’m as prepared as possible.

We did actually write no less than 3 applications today, and 2 were actually deployed to the iPhone for testing. It was a pretty cool feeling to see your own application loaded onto the phone.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow and the rest of the week. It’s a good class of people, and the two teachers (Aaron and Joe) from Big Nerd Ranch are awesome. I’ve struggled at times when I was reading and typing my own code, but having somebody right there that can look over your shoulder and explain what you did wrong is pretty awesome.

More later this week!

So much for the estimated 6 hours for assembly.

It’s not all that interesting, but this is the only photo I’ve had time to take since I got here since I have not been able to leave my room. Like most of these travel jobs, it’s been long days. 

Today is the last day of editing, and I have one more video to get done before the trip is over. The last video needs to be done and out the door by 7pm tonight, but there is still shooting going on today that needs to be included. So it will be one of those down to the wire situations. 

Tomorrow I get to sleep in (a little) and then we have a 1pm flight to head back home. I’m wishing I had added one extra day to just hang out on the beach here before I left!