Sunday 17 March 2013

Spring, in fits and starts

drip drip drip

This being Calgary in March, we have had at least three seasons in the past two weeks: everything from glorious sunshine and temperatures more suited to adventures with feet clad in handknit socks and Birkenstock sandals, to yesterday's dull grey blowing fluffy flakes and windchill fit for somewhere in Nunavut. We still need the moisture, so I won't begrudge the precipitation....

In between other things, I've been playing around more with Canon Hacker Development Kit (CHDK) on my SX10IS: the latest experiment in shooting in RAW format. Good news is that it works just fine, but I need to convert them to something else (in my case, I used Raw Photo Processor (RPP) lets me turn them into 16-bit TIFFs. Mirabile dictu, it worked, but rather than go through the extra step, I've just switched over to taking pictures in DNG (that's Digital Negative, for you photo geeks out there) when I'm running CHDK.

Drilling down

That being said, I'm really pleased with the two photos I played with, and I quite like some of the things RPP lets me do with them first, so I suspect I'll be messing around with it for awhile yet.

On days when the weather's been great, I've taken to firing up the barbeque for dinner: there's nothing like grilled lamb to proclaim spring to me. And whether it's the longer days, or simply the passage of another six months since the last paradigm shift in my life, I feel better than I've felt in a very, very long time.

Dinner

Since I haven't been as prolific as I'd like with my camera -- at least, not for public viewing -- my final offering in today's entry is a wonderful song from 1963.

Most people probably remember the Jack Jones version, but I've always preferred the arrangement Burt Bacharach plays as an instrumental: the arrangement in this one in particular is great, with David Sanborn and George Duke, performed live, as part of 1998's live tribute at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, NY, and released as One Amazing Night.



There's something about that rough-hewn vocal at the end that's always made me feel good, and right now, the lyrics make me smile.

Dim all the lights
Pour the wine
Start the music
Time to get ready for love.


1 comment:

  1. A wonderful entry with some really nice photos, Linda. I also enjoyed the live performance of L'ange Vagabond.

    ReplyDelete

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