Dust and Rust

I’m a big fan of OpTech Straps. I had ordered a OpTech Classic Pro Loop Strap for my GF1 the other day. I wanted to use the strap from my D200 in the mean time. When I tried to attach the Pro Loop connectors, I was sadly frustrated by the tiny lugs on the GF1. I took a little bit of my hacker instinct, and decided to cut the leather attachment threading to open the loops up and attach them in a “permanent” way. The results are great and seem very secure. See more info below.

- Sean

Close Up of the leather that gets un-stitched

I used an x-acto knife to cut the threads in the leather shown here. The threads are in a box pattern with an “X” inside. The loops are already open, and don’t need to be cut once the stitching is removed. Next, i put the open loop through the GF1 Lugs, positioned the leather back on them so the strap would hang with the buckles facing in. Next, I put a few stitches in to hold everything in place so I could stich it back up without things moving around. Make sure your new stitches go through both parts of the loop - I positioned the loop ends carefully so that they were under the original needle holes. Then finish up the stitching, and repeat on the other connector.

Full Strap from my D200 now attached

I’m very happy with the results. The only downside is that the loop connectors would need to be cut off to take them off the GF1. I’ve never removed the connectors from my D200 until I did this mod…. so not a big deal for me.

The loop connectors attached together in “Hand Strap” configuration

In this photo, you can see the 2 loop adapters connected to each other, with the padded portion of the strap removed. This creates a nice hand strap when the full strap is not needed. The Optech snap in connectors are very secure and have never accidentally disconnected on my D200.

Let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment.

Easter Egg Dying

It was a rough winter… but we had a nice taste of spring last week. We dyed some Easter Eggs last weekend with the kids. I’m strangely attracted to the black one in the upper right. It looks like it came right out of the pickled egg jar at Moe’s Tavern. Maybe for Halloween this year I’ll make a dozen “evil” eggs.

Thinking Inside the Box

While not as extreme as the Cardboard Office, my friend/co-worker Mike was trying to come with ideas for gaining some privacy in our temporary office space. I’ve resorted to a pair of Sennheiser EH-150’s to block out the world… but his approach does a better job of getting the point across. On the technical side, the photo was taken with my iPhone… not my first choice in photographic tools, but it’s always there when a quick snap is needed. The crappy lens adds a nice soft glow to the image.

I’ve noticed a significant increase in comment spam… mostly poorly hidden (sorry http://losebellyfat.profitcruiser.com ) I noticed some referrals coming in from http://wpblackhat.com/commenter/modifiedblog.html . After looking into it, I found this site : http://www.contentgeneration.org/wpblackhat-faqs/ . Apparently you can sign up for $89 a month and get lots of tools and scripts to fake out Google, Amazon, and other affiliate programs by forcing visitors directly to ad links when they click on links that are supposed to go to a real posting. The also have lots of blog scraping tools that will generate craptastic conglomeration sites using other peoples content, which they plaster with ads.

The end result is that it is getting very hard to tell a real comment from a spam comment… so many comments are going to the askimet spam folder.

While none of this appears illegal… i’m sure it will hurt everyone long term… bloggers, affiliate programs, and anyone doing a search for real content.

The Ebony Hillbillies

It was a rough commute yesterday. Something happened with the fragile wires that make the trains go into Penn Station, and my morning commute turned into a 3 hour annoyance. I felt really bad for the guy across the aisle from me. He was headed for an important meeting, and I could feel the stress building in each cell phone call to his boss/customer/client as he tried to keep them happy. After leaving work at the end of the day, I headed back to Penn to see what awaited me for my commute back home. Luckily for me, the trains were running on schedule, *and* I got to listen to the fine Bluegrass of the Ebony Hillbillies. It took the edge off at the end of a long day. Just wanted to give them a quick shout out from a grateful commuter.