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The final blow

Sunday, November 30, 2008

As you sort things out and find stability something always seems to give way.  Why it happens is beyond me, but it happens and that’s that!

Today marked the end of Hikenbike.net and Digitalrv.net.  Hackers!  Those cute cuddly hackers.

As long time readers know my original site was titled “Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles.”  For several years I’ve documented travels, trials, adjustments, and the beginning of a new life in Prescott, AZ.  And I’ve done it all from an Airstream.

That’s where the whole Airstream Chronicles concept came from.  The Airstream has been my home for a while now.  Not very original as far as the title, but it worked.  That’s also why this site’s title is what it is.  Bottom line, my Airstream Blog got trashed!

Long time readers also know that I began having problems with my site months ago.  Actually, it all began when I started writing about scamming websites and phishing e-mails that I received.  I stopped writing about all of that when an extremely disturbing threat came my way from one of the people behind the scams.  I backed off at the time with good reason.

Since that point in time I let it go.  But the same week the threats began the major hacks on my sites began as well.  Today they struck the final blow.

I left the old sites in place, and hackers began working away at the infrastructure.  Today my old e-mail addresses went down, and when I logged into my IX Webhosting account I found new folders, files I was locked out of, and my e-mail accounts trashed.  Not good.

After sorting through the damage to the Digital RV and Hikenbike I decided it was time to take down the entire structure of the sites.  The mail accounts were toast and it was clear that new pages were being built by the hackers.  No way I was about to let that continue.

Fortunately I’ve backed up my original data and I have the files to rebuild someday.  Just not today.  That will be quite the project.  Rebuilding the podcast site, the Airstream Chronicles, and the Digital RV?  Yeah, something of a job.

I’m happy to say that I put this website together before the final attack.  And it’s sad to know that hackers will go to such lenghts.  Here’s hoping my new host does a better job of helping me protect my new site!

For all of you who e-mail to my hikenbike.net address or my digitalrv.net address, time to update your e-mail contact for me.  I’ll be sending out alternate addresses in the next few days.

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Two more…..

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Time is definitely precious.  I don’t have much of it lately, so I value it greatly!

In another week I’ll have more time available.  Well, sort of.  My newly freed up time will be re-tasked to the gallery.  Busy will still be the order of the day, but I’ll have a new set of “busy” items to deal with.  Fortunately the change in schedule should allow for broader blog posts once again, new tutorials, and maybe even some new podcasts.

Oh yes, this will all occurr between the stack of growing print jobs.  Sure my time will free up!  Heh!  Wishful thinking, but I’ll still give it a whirl!  In the end, I think I’ll always be busy, and that’s a positive.  Just a differnt kind now!

This morning I finally found a few moments to sort through the latest round of photos from the ghost town visit the other day.  A few more gems in the rough came out of the trip.  I knew there were a few more, I just didn’t have time to really examine all of the shots.

All about time you know.

If you can’t tell, I seem to have developed a fixation with old wagons.  Well, not really a fixation….just the availability of wagons to shoot leads one to conclude that there could be a fixation.  There were several old wagons at the photo site, and I tried to get as many as I could.  Provided they made for an interesting shot that is!

A return visit to Yarnell might be in order.  I’ve got it marked off on my little “return” list, and I’m sure I will sometime in the future.  Maybe during the monsoons.  Just imagine some of these shots with menacing storms moving in!  That would be very interesting indeed!

Little else to post on this evening.  Just thought I’d pop up the latest shots that I enjoyed from the ghost town visit.  A few more were selected today too, but I just can’t post everything at once.  Where’s the fun in that?

By the way……the second shot in this post is of a very old and very small church structure.  I was thinking of calling it, “Waiting by the church.”  The old wagon broken down in front of the building was interesting.  What I’d love is a person in an old faded and yellowed bridal gown set between the building and wagon with the gown flowing in the wind.  That would be an interesting image I think.

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Happy Day After Thanksgiving!

Friday, November 28, 2008

The Thanksgiving post was totally missed!  Top reasons?

  • I slept in late as I didn’t get home until after mid-night.  Very tired boy!
  • After sleeping in I got right to cleaning the trailer.  Guests coming you know!
  • Once the trailer was clean I started cooking.
  • When the cooking was done I had to clean again.  Small space, remember?
  • After the cleaning there was of course eating.
  • With food in my tummy I felt extremely satiated and tired!

There you go.  My excuses for not posting yesterday.  Pretty good ones, eh?

Well, Happy Day After Thanksgiving to you!  Hope you didn’t camp out in front of random stores for deals.  Sleeping in is better!

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You couldn’t ask for a better day

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sure, Prescott was under a blanket of clouds today.  And yes, the smell of wood smoke was thick.  Another controlled burn.  The fall seems to be full of controlled burns.  Finally, I did get rained on while walking to “The Art Store.”  But you know what…….?

It was a good day!

Last night I wondered and pondered about the printer driver disaster yesterday.  What to do, what to do?  And this morning it struck me…..  You’re using Time Machine on the Mac you goofball!  You can restore things to the moment before.  Can’t believe you wasted all that time yesterday?  Hooray for time machine….booo for being a forgetful lad!

Yup, that’s right.  My solution was a 5 minute fix.  All good.  Then I did the Mac driver update for HP and everything worked like a champ again.  Plus the trouble I was trying to resolve got resolved.  A good start to the day!

Before 9:30 I had everything ready to go, so I got going.  3 more canvas wraps for David Riley.  I’ve finally caught up on his prints.  Hooooorah!  Of course, I think he’s got more coming my way.  His paintings are great, and he’s becoming a very popular artist in our gallery.  I’m so glad to see him excel!

After David’s prints I geared up for some “internal” work.  By that I mean prints by Ian and I.  I haven’t printed much of my own stuff lately as I’ve been too wrapped up with other people’s prints.  My stuff can wait.  Paying clients first, right?

One print I decided to play with today was shot only last night.  A 13×19 just for fun.  It came out better than I thought.  Better than you see on your screen.  Remember, what’s on your screen isn’t as good as the print.  Your screen isn’t color calibrated, and most likely still won’t reflect what a print will…….  Well, unless you’ve got a Mac Cinema Display…..  :)

The print came out great.  It was so cool I did 3 more.  Not 3 more of the same print of course.  Just a few I’ve decided not to share here yet.  You can’t see everything here you know.  Going to have to pop by the gallery at some point in time…that’s my suggestion!

While doing the 13×19’s I set up on several prints for Ian and I.  What a lot of printing!  Ah well, that’s what I was there for today.

Ian suggested I give a gallery wrap or two a whirl.  I’ve never done one for any of my prints, and honestly I haven’t worried too much about it.  In the past two weeks I’ve done plenty for other people.  How would my photography translate to canvas?  Good question.  The answer came today.

After sorting through photos, and keeping in mind what I’m offering “large” right now I decided to do one of my Grand Canyon shots.  Bright Angel trail.  It’s a pretty cool shot, and I’ve enjoyed the 8×12 prints.  It was time to do a big one.

How big is a little amazing.  30 inches wide by 48 inches tall.  Hey, that’s how the print size worked out.  I used an HP Canvas that I had on hand (42 inches wide), and I recalibrated the color just to be sure.  After all the prep I set the printer to work.

What came out was stunning!  It was better than I expected, and Ian was pretty blown away too.  Nice when you get something better than expected!  Really nice.

By the way, I’m an extreme critic of my stuff.  Often I want to delete files only to have friends point them out and suggest printing them.  To say I was blown away is a big thing.  I really was.

Unfortunately our stretcher bars hadn’t arrived yet.  Ian ordered them last week, but it seems everyone is on vacation or something.  It seems to happen a lot lately.  Several of my frames were back ordered by 2 weeks last month.  A trend?  Ah well.

That’s when I walked out into the rain and headed for the Art Store.  They had stretcher bars.  Sure they were expensive….but they were in stock.

For the afternoon we set about putting gloss on to all of the gallery wraps we’ve created recently.  We had a lot to do.  6 of David Riley’s, 6 of Ian’s, and 2 of mine.  Heh, I didn’t tell you what my other wrap is.  Once again, you’re going to have to stop by!  ;)

In the end we found our latest experiment to be more than successful.  See, we’ve been toying with ideas on treating canvas after printing.  Sprays, canned sprays, or rolling.  Today we’ve decided very simply, rolling is the way to go.  Weeks ago I ordered a test package from BreathingColor.com.  More orders will be coming their way.  Satisfied is an understatement!

Our end results for the day were more than amazing!  Oh, did I mention all the customers that showed up this afternoon and had to work around drying prints all over the shop?

No?

I’ll have to tell you about that later.  I’m tired!

.

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Quick Update

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Yesterday was a gallery / photo day.  For the morning I spent my time updating my HP Z3100 drivers on the Mac.  Go figure, as with many driver updates my printer stopped working.  Ah, so much fun.

Fortunately I’ve got the solution and will correct everything this morning.  And excuse my sarcasim….this is actually the first time I’ve had a driver update on Macintosh fail.  I think I’m bothered because I have A LOT of prints to finish!

At 2 p.m. Caden, Caitlin, Josh, & Tony showed up at the gallery.  We’d planned a quick trip to Yarnell.  Caden had heard about a cool little ghost town there and we’d been invited to go and take a few photos.  I’m glad I went with my friends, I needed to do something different, but the printer issue was on my mind the whole way!

Fortunately the ghost town was worth the visit!  Tony forgot his camera, but the rest of us were firing away.  Big fun.  I felt like we were following each other around…..seems like everyone wanted to setup in the same area every time.

So, today you finally get to see two new photos!  Personally I like the pickle barrel.  I didn’t check to see if any pickles were available though.

Well, that’s the wrap.  Gotta get to the gallery to work on the printer driver fix and start back into a ton of prints!

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A new day

Monday, November 24, 2008

Well, decisions have been made.  In a few weeks time will be freed up and I’ll be spending the majority of my time at the gallery.

It’s nice to have things finalized!  What a relief!

A good friend of mine who likes reading horoscopes sent something along yesterday for me.  She’s a scientist who really diggs astrology.  Odd combination, but true.  What she sent to me was the following…..

It’s a day of endings and beginnings as the Moon enters your transformative sign. But don’t expect something new to pop up as soon as the old is acknowledged. This is not about sudden change, but rather the process of metamorphosis that happens after the completion of one phase and before the birth of the next.

What’s happening over the next few weeks will not be sudden, and it will be a transistion.  So, her note really fit for the day!

In the end this means the blog will be busier once again.  Maybe even a few new photos…..

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Stepping over the edge

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The blog has been quiet again for a while.  For the next few weeks I can see that trend continuing, but then I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Today I’ll be requesting a “cut back” at the tie over job.  Time needs to be freed up for the gallery.  We all knew that would be coming.  What I see happening is a black or white situation.  Either they’ll go for the request or I’ll be putting in a two week’s notice.  From my initial discussions with the senior staff I’m not sure which way they’ll want to go.

Frankly at this point the result for the tie over job doesn’t mean much to me.  I want to be at the gallery.  On gallery days I’m very excited about getting up and getting into work.  That’s probably got a lot to do with the fact that it’s my business, not someone else’s.

So, this could be another one of those banner “change days.”  I could be coming home tonight knowing that it will be all about the gallery and the print business in two weeks.  Or I could be coming home knowing that I’ve still got one foot in the tie over job, but the other firmly planted in the gallery.

Either way it feels like another one of those “risk” moments where you’re taking the first step over the edge.  A little scary, and a little bit of an adrenalin rush.

Of course, I’ll post how it all works out here.

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Closed

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

One and one half hours of driving one way.

Time in the Versa.

Rolling through downtown Sedona.

Pulling up to the entrance of West Fork to find out they’re closed…….!

That was yesterday’s big adventure.  Sadira and I had decided to take a ride up to Sedona and take a “Fall Walk” into West Fork.  Too bad we didn’t know that West Fork was completely closed for trail maintenance.

Sadira has told me for a while that Arizona’s Fall colors are amazing.  Now, being from New England I think I know fall colors.  And I look around myself here in Prescott and I don’t see a whole heap of trees that will go through the change.  But in Sedona I could believe it…..

As we started into the Sedona area you could see splashes of color (beyond the red rocks and blue skies) and I was pretty excited by the prospect of hiking West Fork again.  I’d blown a few photos there on my last hike due to a specific equipment failure……my brain.

When you hike into the woods under tree cover with dappled light and you bring your tripod, use it!  Don’t be like me.  Don’t stop for that shot and then say, “I’m sure this one will work out hand held….I’ve got enough light.”  Yeah right, enough light.  So many potential shots right out the window.  Worst part….the tripod was with me the whole way!

Yesterday would have been the day to correct the mistakes of the last hike.  But as we pulled into the West Fork parking lot we were greeted by a gate.  Our first response was to park road side.  Unfortunately there were tons of No Parking signs.  Second issue?  The gate signs clearly stated that the trail itself was also closed.

As quickly as we arrived we packed it in and headed back to town.  No sense risking tickets, violating the park, etc.  We’ll return again sometime soon.  Maybe when a little snow sets in on the red rocks!

On our way back we finally had an opportunity to photograph a bridge that’s been on my mind since the day I first saw it.  Very cool canyon, interesting water flow way below, and a parking lot that’s always full.  Well, normally it’s full.  Yesterday we caught a break and had the time to take a few shots!  Hooray!

Once we packed the cameras away we headed into town.  A stop at the “World of Jerky”, Rollies Camera, and the “Life is Good” store.  After that, New Frontiers where I stocked up on a favorite brand of baked tofu.  Our local store carries all flavors except the one that works for me.  The other flavors all have stuff in them I cannot eat without an allergic incident.  Go figure….

Finally we returned to Prescott and headed down to the gallery for a little while.  A little framing, a little talk with customers, and visiting with Ian as well.  Thursday will be my big printing day again.  Maybe I’ll even post a real review of the HP.  We’ll see…..

Oh, one final random note.  Yesterday I received a super cool early birthday present.  Thanks Sadira!  My new waterproof Lowe Pro camera pack is just too cool!  And yes….today is my birthday.  29 years old (again)!

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Time on the Z3100

Friday, November 14, 2008

I’ve printed with both Canon and Epson for years.  Back in the 90’s I got really turned off to HP.  And yet when I finally selected a wide format printer for our business here in Prescott I went with an HP.  Why?

After reading review after review of the latest in wide format printers I kept coming up with the Z3100.  So, based on great reviews I decided to give HP another shot.

I’m glad I did!

From the moment we unpacked the printer (the new non-damaged one) everything has seemed a little too easy.  The packing of the printer couldn’t make setup easier.  Somebody sat down and actually engineered the packing layout if you ask me.

Within an hour Ian and I had the printer assembled.  It definitely takes two people to set it up due to size.  Ian was impressed, and I was pondering what the 60″ printer would have looked like.  A small car most likely.

Setting up the print heads and ink cartridges was easy too.  The printer guides you through it, the quick install guide walks you through it, and I think anyone who can read could set the printer up and prep it for printing.  Just way too easy.

After putting the printer together I had to align the print heads, calibrate the printer, etc.  Not hard at all.

Since assembling the printer we’ve done 19 wide format print jobs.  How do I know that?  The printer tells me it.  Pretty darned amazing!

In the period of a week I believe I’ve really figured out the new 3100.  It’s the easiest wide format I’ve ever dealt with.  Since the 90’s I’ve dealt with wide formats for both Sprint & AT&T.  I was the guy who was called first when things stopped working.  And I can tell you, none of those printers offered what this one does.

Wow, I must really like the product.

And no, this isn’t my whole HP write up.  I’ll get into detail at a later time.  Not enough time this morning.

The bottom line though is that we’re truly up and running now and I’m blown away.  Yesterday I had 3 clients waiting for print jobs first thing.  A fourth came through to ask a few questions about scanning, printing, and minimum sizes.  Fun and busy day.

By the way, all 3 new clients are extremely satisfied with their prints (3 24×36″ prints), and all 3 are planning on coming back with more work for me!

Wonder when the gallery will be my full time job?????  ;)

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A walk through the Ian Russell Gallery

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

For weeks I’ve meant to photograph pieces in the gallery.  We’ve got several interesting artists hosted at the gallery, and the stuff they create needs be seen!

So, before heading into work I took a quick drive by the gallery yesterday.

Oh, I also stopped in because I wanted to take a look at the prints we created on Monday.  Just so happy with the quality!

On a walk through of our little spot I think that the average person probably misses out on at least one or two artists.  We’ve got several interesting jewelry makers for instance, and their stuff is displayed in a pretty wood case in the center of the store.  What I’ve seen tells me that people walk around the case, but they don’t look in it.  Got to work on that one, or at least point it out to everyone.

There are of course “stand out” pieces that everyone sees.  One artist that you can’t miss is Gary Persello.  Gary has several of his bronzes displayed with us, and you just can’t miss them.  After learning the time it takes to create a bronze I can promise you it will never become a hobby for me.  I’ll stick to photos and making prints thanks!

Beyond Gary we have many other folks hosted.  Rick Geib for instance is another bronze artist. Rick creates interesting sea creature scenes that you have to see for yourself.  He’s another nationally known artist that has decided to work with us.

As I walked through the gallery I found myself taking a lot of pictures.  There’s so much to see, and I personally have looked at the detail of every piece in the shop.  The bronzes of course, functional pottery, raccu pottery (totally mis-spelled that), hand carved wood pieces, other flat art, and a super cool kalidascope (a new artist with us) all caught my attention, and a moment or two with the lens.  Too much to see all at once, and too much to display on one blog entry.

My plan going forward is a simple one.  I will try to feature two artists per month on the blog to let you know who I’m working with.  See, the gallery has opened up a whole new world when it comes to meeting interesting people with their own visions.

Of course, I still have my own vision for what we’re doing at the gallery.  Sure, I want to sell my own prints.  That’s part of my goal.  But the bigger goal for me is creating reproductions for other local artists with the new printer.

Hey, that’s probably why I got the printer.  Getting it for Ian and I only wouldn’t make much financial sense at all.  But getting it with the intent of working for others made a ton of sense.

On that note I’ve got to say I’m going to be very busy over the next few weeks.  Multiple clients are scheduled to come through tomorrow to check out the printer, the recent prints, and to talk to me about pricing for canvas prints.  Ah yes, the price sheet I haven’t finished yet!  What fun!

So, as a warning, the blog may be a little more sporadic.  Between the “tie over job” and the gallery I’m going to be a very busy guy.  After all, this time next year I’d like to be referred to as a high end wide format art printer for Northern Arizona.  I think I’ve got my niche here in Prescott.  Now I’ve got to make it work!

With that I’m going to wrap up the post.  Breakfast, then a quick trip to the gallery again before work.

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