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Blogging Chester County Events Photo Journal Photography

2011 Spring Sampling at Exton Beverage

This afternoon, I got a chance to help a friend out, and also enjoy a good time!

I have known Greg Ramirez for over 12 years now, and it is always nice to have a chance to help him out.

So to this afternoon, I got a chance to go down to Exton Beverage to participate in their “Spring Sampling”!

and never passing on a chance for doing some photos, and sampling some good beers, I took a little time to capture some of the following images which are now only available on the Exton Beverage Facebook Fanpage.

 

2011 Spring Sampling - Exton Beverage
2011 Spring Sampling - Exton Beverage

My next technical task, is to figure out a better way to display Facebook images in my Blog.

As always, comments are always Welcome!

– Andrew
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Categories
Blogging Note to Self Thoughts

[Note2Self] – Carbonated Drinks

You know that you have been drinking too many carbonated drinks, when you tap on the top of your soup can before you open it…

– Andrew
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Categories
Add-Ons Backups Browsers Flickr Hacking How to(s)? Information Reference Tech Talk Tips

flickr Award Counter – Backup, Restore and Transfer

If you get involved with the Flickr photography groups that have awards, you will notice that there is no really good way to track what you have, until flickr Award Counter (fAC) by Andy Felton (PhazeShift).

flickr Award Counter can take some time to initially setup, because you have to enter in each Award Title (think of a naming structure), and the URL to the Award image for the greasemonkey/javascript counters to work, but once it is done, fAC works great!

But beware, once done, there does not appear to be a direct way to back up all your filter/counter work.

Backup

After some hunting, I found a thread on the Flickr Hacks – “Award Counter – backup?“, which suggested that one backup the Firefox “prefs.js” file, which can be found (example: Win XP):

C:Documents and Settings%profilename%Application Data ¬
MozillaFirefoxProfilesdm24ria8.defaultsprefs.js

where

%profilename%

is the current user, and

dm24ria8.defaults

could be “any-name.defaults” within this path, and includes “prefs.js”, and all the more fun if there are multiple users! A-)

The simplest backup, is to copy/duplicate the “prefs.js” file within the same directory and adding the “.bak” extension (“prefs.js.bak”) or copy the file to another location, and leave yourself a reminder of where!

Restore

To restore, just replace the damages file with the backup from above.

Transfer

Many times, all you want to do, is to transfer your filter/counter information from one machine to another.

If you use the Restore method mentioned above, one of the immediate down sides is that the destination machine, will inherit the “prefs.js” settings from the source machine.

In some cases, this might be sufficient, but what if you ONLY want the filter/counter information.

about:config

On the machine that has the Main/Source of filter/counters, launch Firefox, and type about:config in the address bar.

You will get a warning screen, and just agree.

[Technically, you are on your own now, so...]

Scroll down to the following filter:

greasemonkey.scriptvals.http://www.phazeshift.co.uk/download//flickrAwardCounter.awards

Double click on the entry, and a new window will open up.

In the “Enter string value” window, copy the string value.

Move to the destination machine, and find the similar entry, and paste in the source filter information.

Quit your browser, and re-launch Firefox, and check your work.

This has been done transferring an existing series of Firefox 4.0 XPro filters to Firefox 4.0 Win7Pro (destination):

C:Users%profilename%AppDataRoaming ¬
MozillaFirefoxProfilesx5lnhhwl.defaultpref.js

with out issue (“x5lnhhwl” will change).

Your mileage may very.

Feature Request(s)

  • Ability to Export/Import filter/counters
    • These could be “traded” via Flickr

Please feel free to add Comments or Feedback.

– Andrew
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Categories
Chester County Creeks Nature Photography Photostream

Hibernia County Park – CCPaPhoto Meet-Up

After several weeks of ‘conversations’ online, we finally gathered at Hibernia County Park for the first Meet-Up of the “Chester County (PA) Photography” – Facebook/Flickr groups!

What is always very interesting at First meetings that start via the internet, is the real person behind the profile icons!

Also helps with not having to create or bring “Hello/My Name Is” name tags!

Anyhow…

We meet at the main parking lot for the mansion at Hibernia County Park, and then drove down the hill toward the “Old Damn” Area, which was already rather full with fisherman.

From the parking lot, we started down the Forge Trail, which follows the West Branch of the Brandywine Creek.

For me, this was a second visit.

The last time that I had been here was seven months ago, just after Tropical Storm Nichole in early October 2010.

On a technical side, this was my first chance in trying out my new Tiffen Digital Neutral Density Filter Kit!

The Kit includes a 0.6ND, 0.9ND and a 1.2ND, and the concept of playing with an additional 9 stops was very intriguing, especially around water!

When the group got to a cleaning next to the water, all the tripods sprung into action, and camera bags flying open in all directions.

110410 Hibernia Park 012
110410 Hibernia Park 012

Not wanting to be left out, I started to look for a good entrance point into the water, and then waded in.

It was cold, was not too bad.

On the way back to the trail, I did manage to slip, and dunk my arm put to my elbow in the creek!

My vest did touch the water, but the pocket liners kept everything dry!

I did not need to lose another camera to water, like I did back in college at Watkins Glen (NY) when my Canon A-1’s neck-strap broke.

We continued down the trail toward the small fishing pond, where there were many people enjoying the day.

Stopping at the small little bridge, we spread out to capture the sights around us.

One vary popular subject, was the small little water fall on the down stream side of the bridge.

110410 Hibernia Park 039
110410 Hibernia Park 039

From the bridge, we head down Lion Heads Drive and toward “The Wall”.

After a little stop, we found another interesting area, which had a very strange attribute.

As one walked from the road toward the creek, there is a large area that has an intense orange color in the dirt and a blueish sheen.

110410 Hibernia Park 048
110410 Hibernia Park 048

Once on the other side of the mess, I crossed a little island, and found a spot.

110410 Hibernia Park 058
110410 Hibernia Park 058

We turned around at Cottage #1, and headed back to the parking lot.

When we got back to the small fishing pound, Jason headed directly back to his car via the trail, while the rest of us continued up Lions Head Drive.

We passed the Mansion and headed back down the dirt road to the Upper Damn Area parking lot.

In the parking allot, we chatted some more, and tossed out ideas of where and when the next Meet-Up will be. Details will be Posted on Facebook and Flickr groups.

From there, we went our separate directions.

When I got home, I began to transfer and process my files, and while showing my daughter my new images, I was able to show my daughter these two images, which I quickly turned into a combination “Poster”.

Hibernia County Park (Oct 2010 vs Apr 2011)
Hibernia County Park (Oct 2010 vs Apr 2011)

All and all, I think folks had a good time!

Thanks to all those folks that came out, and I look forward to our next adventure!

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Attendees

Categories
Announcements Blogging Chester County Photography

Hibernia Photo Meetup! (4/10 @ 10am)

Hibernia Park after Tropical Storm Nicole
Hibernia Park after Tropical Storm Nicole

Just a reminder that we are going to be having a Chester County (PA) Photography Meetup at Hibernia Park on Sunday, April 10 at 10am!

Please register so that we know who is coming!

– Andrew
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