jaraxal.dev

It would seem that I’ve allowed this blog to become inactive. It’s been three years since my last post. To be honest, I was never much of a blogger so I’m not surprised this site has languished.

Going forward, I plan to write more frequently and expand the content to include more technology-related posts, particularly tutorials. As a Solutions Engineer at Hortonworks, I find plenty of opportunities to generate useful content based on my daily work.

I had an opportunity to take a short trip to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia.  I’ve always wanted to go, and this was my first trip.  Regarding theme parks, they weren’t very different from Kings Dominion or Hershey Park.  My family and I had a good time.

One of the attractions that most interested me was the Animal Ambassadors.  I’m not aware of other theme parks offering something similar.  They have an up-close tour, during which you pay to get behind-the-scenes exposure to the animals.  I was most excited about the Wolf tour, but my timing was horrible, and I missed it.  I was able to see some other very cool animals you don’t see every day.  Naturally, I went with a camera in hand!

This is my cat, Simba.  He’s getting old these days, but he’s just as active as my other two, much younger, cats.  This is an older photo I took of him in 2010.  I did a little post-processing of the shot in Lightroom and cropped the image.

Overall, I’m happy with how this turned out:

Simba

You can find this photo and others on Flickr Jaraxal’s Flickr Photostream - Cats.

I don’t always get an opportunity to review my photos right away. Distractions will arise, and photo reviews sometimes get lost in the shuffle. Periodically, I find myself going through my Lightroom catalogs and looking for interesting photos. Sometimes, I’ll find an interesting shot that I never got around to reviewing. I found this Praying Mantis on my front porch and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a few photos.

My family and I traveled to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore in July 2011.  We had a great time, and I’m considering making it one of our annual summer excursions.

I was able to grab a decent set of photos during my visit.  I’m particularly fond of this one:

Dexter Cattle (Bos taurus)

You can see the rest of my trip photos here: Jaraxal’s Flickr Photostream - Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.

A few weeks ago, I posted that I would experiment with using Tumblr as my blogging platform.  I used Tumblr over the last few weeks.  I think it worked alright, but the workflow didn’t work quite right.  Trying to get posts to look the way I wanted was a bit too onerous.  When I post a photo, I usually want to provide some minimal background or support description.  I liked how Tumblr presented photos using the “Photo” post type.  But that format doesn’t support much in the way of descriptive text.  That forces me to use the “Text” post type and embed the photo.  These post types have different behaviors regarding options and the look and feel of the posts.

I decided to take a day trip to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Church Creek, MD.  I had never been there before, but I heard there were photo opportunities to be had.  The trip is about 2.5 hours from my house, so 5 hours total travel time.  I was only there for about an hour, but it was worth it.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center · 2145 Key Wallace Dr, Church Creek, MD 21622

While reviewing some of my photos on Flickr, I noticed this message: Your photos are currently not appearing in public searches. More info. I was pretty sure that I had no settings to prevent my photos from appearing in searches, so I clicked the more info link.

The link takes you to a page listing reasons why your photos would not appear in searches. Here are the reasons listed:

• New account
• Need at least five photos
• Need tags and descriptions
• Need appropriate safety level set
• Make sure the account is not hidden from search
• Make sure photos are not hidden from search

None of those reasons applied, as far as I could tell. My account has existed since 2009. I have uploaded over 50 photos, although those uploads have been done in the last week or so. My photos have tags and descriptions. My account is not hidden from search, and none of the photos are hidden from search.

I usually take photographs with my Canon 7D. Sometimes, a shot presents itself when the only thing I have available is my iPhone. You can get some outstanding shots with an iPhone when the lighting is good.  I’m surprised by how well these photos came out with my iPhone 4S. Here is one of the photos:

European hornet (Vespa crabro)

You can find this photo and others on my Flickr

I’ve had a Flickr account since 2009. I honestly never used it much. However, I really like the new redesign. Since the update, I’ve started putting more photos on Flickr. The thought wouldn’t have crossed my mind before the update.

I still wish they had better sharing abilities. I want to create a username/password for specific sets and share those sets. This is useful for sharing photos with only family and friends. I’m not interested in forcing them to create Flickr accounts or getting everyone’s email address and associating it with permissions on a set.