Summer Time!

What exactly does that mean? Well.... for me, it means I get to play with all that technology that I've expended so much effort in accumulating! After all, what good is it if you don't play with it? I'd just be a collector, and as much as I enjoy that aspect of my hobby, I don't find it all that fulfilling. I want to use the cameras, watch the movies at full theater levels, look at and edit the pictures on my nice computer rig, and read on my tablet. This morning as I sit here in front of the computer after having dumped the pictures from my camera, I'm feeling pretty satisfied at having accomplishing most of it in the last week.

Over the weekend, we had some friends over for dinner and afterwards, we were sitting around chatting and the conversation turned to my home theater system. We discussed the sound levels of a movie theater and what I was trying to do with my system. Then the discussion turned to Blu-Ray and how that was different than plain DVDs. I happen to have both the standard and BD version of "Top Gun" so we ran them. It's been a long time since I've actually sat through that whole movie, and it was great! 

Actually it's just one of the many movies that I own and have always intended on watching during the summer when I have the time. This is a sad admission, but I rarely sit and watch our 400 or so moves that's been collected over the years. Granted that many of them are for the kids, but at least half are my favorites. So, each of the last several summers, I've made a list of ones that I want to pull out and watch..... and each summer, I've failed miserably. .....But now that I've gotten off to a start, here's my list of 10 for this summer (hopefully), in no particular order:

•  "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"- Steve Martin/Rachel Ward in one of my favorite "spoofs" of all time. It combines the two genres that I love; spoofs, and Film Noir.
• "Top Gun"- No action movie more reflects "my time" that this one, plus it was the last movie that I can remember where Kelly McGillis was hot. She did not age well, unlike Rachel Ward!
• "Silverado"- A classic western remade in the modern idiom with my favorite actors all in one film: Kevin Cline, Scott Glen, John Cleese, and Danny Glover.
• Any 2 "Charlie Chan" movies- I know, I know; Chinese people should be offended by these. I mean.... even the Chalie Chan character wasn't played by an Asian (in any version), but i love them. They'd be my guilty pleasure if I felt guilty about them at all!
• "The Big Sleep"- My favorite of all the Bogie/Bacall movies.... and this is coming from somebody who sits typing this drinking coffee out of a "Casablanca" cup.
• "Terminator"- Just nice to go back and see the Governator, back when life was simpler for him.
• "Total Recall"- Not on an Arnold kick. Just want to see this before I watch the remake.
• "Return of the King"- Need to watch this last one to finish the series that the kids and I started watching earlier in the year.
• "Rustler's Rhapsody"- One of my other favorite spoofs. This is pretty much of an unknown, but if you get why I love "Silverado", you'd probably get why I love this obscure little movie as well. 

I intend to watch more movies, but this is my summer list for this year.  

A few days ago, we decided to take advantage of the unusually cool weather (low 90s) for this part of the country and go camping. Although this time, it wasn't going to be in a trailer (we sold it), it wasn't exactly going to be roughin' it. We went to one of the many Jellystone Parks scattered around the country. They are basically RV type facilities that have activities onsite. This one is attached to a small water park, and had laser tag, pools, bike riding and movies in the evening (among other things). We actually rented an RV spot so we could have water and electricity. Although we were in a tent, it was pretty civilized..... air mattresses, electric lantern lighting, propane cook grill, etc. 

But since we packed everything inside our mid-sized SUV, space was at a premium, plus we weren't going out to the mountains or anything, so it was a perfect time to take the new camera system..... the Micro 4/3rds Panasonic GF-1. All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. Other than the fact that using an LCD screen to compose with in full sunlight is an absolute disaster, it did a fine job. Even that wasn't the camera's fault since that was something I knew, bought the accessory finder to deal with BUT left it back at the campsite when we went to the water park and needed it the most! So I basically shot everything "blind" at the Pirate's Cove. Apart from that though, the camera handles great, and the weight and size is a revelation for someone who has been using full-sized Nikon DSLRs with a "super-zoom" attached for the last 3-4 years! I will have to learn the color-balance system of this camera a little better though since everything seems to come out a little bit "bluish" to my eye. I am so far very impressed with the "kit" 14-42mm zoom. It was almost a throw-in since I got the camera at pretty much the price of a body (a low one at that) and I fully intend on getting both the prime, 14mm and 20mm "pancake" lenses to use on this camera. In the end, this camera has rendered my D50 "backup" camera obsolete!

Any other summer things going on for a Frugal Propellerhead? I'm glad you asked! Just a couple of quick hitters to end this post. I caught a couple of pieces of RAM at a good price and upgraded my X301 from 4Gb to 8Gb of RAM for about $40 total. I'm happy with that. And one other project that I'll be devoting a full post to, is a budget desktop build for our recently graduated baby-sitter Alyssa who's going to be entering the Mechanical Engineering degree program at a local university. This one is going to be a fun project calling on all my tricks to do it as inexpensively as possible.