Some images taken along Struble Trail in Downingtown, Chester County PA.
How many faces can you find?
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I am in the process of renovating three 30-year-old bathrooms in our house, and was wondering how I might recycle the sinks, toilets, tubs and tiles.
So I posted to my wall on Facebook, within minutes the Downingtown Borough answered –
“We do not have a recycling program for construction debris. You would have to contact a private hauling company or check with the Chester County Solid Waste Authority“
Very quick response!
They also suggested that I try Uwchlan Township and Home Eclective.
I had never heard of Home Eclective, but after a quick look at their Facebook page, I will need to revisit!
I went back to my Task, and on to the Uwchlan Township website to see if I could find any answers, and found that their Trash & Recycling page is much like the Downingtown page.
At the moment, Uwchlan Township does not have a Facebook or Twitter account to follow, but “Coming Soon“!
Both the Downingtown and Uwchlan pages reference heavily the Chester County Solid Waste Authority (CCSWA), and I have also referenced them in the past in “eWaste Recycling in Downingtown“.
The unfortunate part, Chester County Solid Waste Authority, has NOT updated their Facebook page since October 26, 2012.
Fortunately, the CCSWA does have a website!
I was able to find a list of “Recycling Sites for Construction Demolition/Land Clearing Debris“, but still no direct mention of sinks, toilets, tubs, and tiles.
I have used their contact page to ask about my recycling questions, and await a response.
In the mean time, while on the CCSWA site, I decided to look up this year’s “Household Hazardous Waste Disposal” calendar, but it still has not been posted.
If you happen to know anything that might help, please feel free to contact me!
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March 3 2015 – As mentioned above/earlier, I sent Contact Request via the Chester County Solid Waste Authority (CCSWA) Website, and I have already gotten a response!
“You may want to contact the “Restore” on Lancaster Avenue next to Amelia’s supermarket east of Coatesville to see if they would be interested in any of those items. There is also one in Kennett Square.” – Nancy J. Fromnick, Chester County Recycling Coordinator, CCSWA
This would be great if the stuff that I had were really reusable.
“Restore” seems to be an off-shoot of Habitat For Humanity of Chester County, and has a local Facebook Page, and can be found at 1853 Lincoln Hwy E Coatesville, PA 19320.
I do have ‘stuff’ that could be reused in construction, that I over bought on, and can easily be re-used, but the stuff that I have, is beyond the point of helping in its present form.
So Builders and Contractors, if you got some Odds and Ends in your Inventory, and want to put it to good use, Restore seems to be a good bet!
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” – Mark Twain
I’ve been thinking about buying a new lens for several years now, and I can never figure out what I want to get.
At the moment, I only carry three lenses:
I lost my EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM last spring, when it decided to go for a swim, and picked up the 75-300mm as a quick replacement.
I must say there is a noticeable difference between those two lenses.
Anyhow…
In my effort to figure out what Lens I wanted to purchase next, I needed to assess my style of photography, again.
In my film camera days, I carried 5-6 fixed length lenses, but in the digital age, I’ve gone down to three.
Mentally I had an idea, but I had no data to back up my real work environment.
Or so I thought…
While in Adobe Lightroom, I realized I could use the EXIF data contained in the metadata of each file – Lens and Focal Lengths!
This is a very fascinating look, at all of one’s images, over 31,000 in this one catalog!
Using Lightroom and the embedded EXIF metadata information, I could clearly see:
Most Used Lens
Most Used Focal Lengths
Needless to say, sorting by every focal length alone is a large grouping, but in my case, I looked for any Focal Length over 1000 images or spikes.
Oddly, there is no spike around 55mm (473 images), which suggests that I never really used the 18mm-55mm all the way zoomed in.
Here is an exercise: What if your Lens happens to cross over in their Focal Length?
In this case, simply isolate/select a given Lens and Record the Focal Length numbers, which can reveal which Lens you actually used for a similar situation, and Thumbnails, just below. It’s a great way to remind you of what you did!
I wish there was a way to export the data and bring it into a spread sheet for my geeky fun! (Note to Self…)
In my case, it turns out to be the Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, which is now verified with actual Lens data.
That did not surprise me in the least, but which side of the Lens should I consider for my next Lens?
Clearly, my next largest ranges are 18mm (13.44%) and 28mm (13.78%) — about 27.22% of the images.
At the same time do I look at the 70-300mm range, which is 18.29%, because I a shot 70mm+ 18.46% of the time?
If this confuses you, don’t worry, because the more you dig into the data, the worse it becomes!
Try some of these!
The list goes on.
I just wanted to highlight another aspect of Adobe Lightroom that might help you in your decision-making.
Now if you have any ideas on what I should do about my Lens dilemma, please let me know via email.
07/17/2015 – In my morning reading, I ran into this site lightroomdashboard.com, in which you upload your Lightroom catalog file (.lrcat), and it will visualize your shooting habits. With a backup of my live catalog (1.27 GBs), I tried the “Drag-n-Drop” interface, and Chrome crashes. There is a Note that says they are aware of issues with 2+ GBs LR Catalogs. I would not be surprised their server(s) are being hit hard today. Need to check later.
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I was playing around in the studio…
Tech Info
(2) Alien Bee B800 w/softboxes (1/32 power)
I just finished the audio version of “Marco Polo” by Laurence Bergreen, inspired by the recent release of the NetFlix series, which I LIKED, and I wanted to do some follow-up learning.
Think for a second… What do you know of Marco Polo?
I’m not going to answer that, because I have read the book, but I guarantee you that you will know more after you have finished!
The Listen itself is rather dry; the Narrator, Paul Boehmer, has a good voice for the job, but I wish another ‘voice’ would separate the Author’s comments/thoughts from the References.
I will be going back and re-listening to this; there is a ton of Info and Detail.
One has to remember that we are dealing with late 13th century accounts of travels that were well beyond ‘normal,’ ‘civilized’ thought at that time.
Do a simple time travel in your mind…
Fire is your only real source of Life…
No real books to speak of…
How many people knew how to write?
How many people could afford to write?
Marco’s best work was done in prison?
Sorry… “Spoilers”
If you like to Read/Listen to this type of Historic literature, and this time frame (1200s – 1300s), may I also suggest “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford, which gives a much broader look at the Khan’s family reign over the Mongol empire. (I’ve listened to this one twice already!)
The Kahn’s tolerance of all religions, something that is very much missed in this day and age, continues to amaze me. We could do better with a revisit of the ‘old days’…
That being said, “Marco Polo” by Laurence Bergreen, is well worth the Listen/Read.
As Bergreen points out, no original surviving manuscripts exist of Marco’s journeys, and the various stories have been told and retold so many times that we will never know the true extent of what was witnessed.
Anyhow, I’m off to LibriVox to download “The Book of Sir Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the kingdoms and marvels of the East, volume 1,” translated by Henry Yule… Just under 10 hours…
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