“Improving a pain-in-the-ass does not make it a kiss! And we need a kiss!”- Doc Searls, Rebooting the News #23
Kawishiwi Falls
While we were up in Ely this past weekend we took a brief hike out to Kawishiwi Falls. I’m a sucker for waterfalls so it doesn’t take much to fill me with awe. I took video with the Canon 5D Mark II to capture the scene and continue to get comfortable with the video capabilities of the camera.
Overall I’m very impressed with the video quality. What you see here is “web video” processed by at least three different conversion processes. The raw video off the camera is incredibly crisp. All these were shot with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS.
I photographed this waterfall in winter during the Wintergreen Photography Dog Sledding trip I took.
Canal Park and Gooseberry Falls
We drove from Duluth to Ely this morning to start our weekend in Ely. We got some photos in Canal Park and of course we stopped at Gooseberry Falls. I really dig the photo of the violins.
Big Green Egg Pro Tip: Vent Alignment
Over the weekend I decided it was time to do a full cleaning of my Big Green Egg. Now and then I find it helpful to actually pull out the fire box and fire ring to get all the ash out of every part of the grill. I know that I need to do this if I can’t easily get the temperature on the grill up over 650 °F. The airflow is just being limited. Time to clean out all the parts.
I got it all cleaned out and as I was putting the parts back together I took a moment to think about technique when pulling ash out with the ash tool. I’m right-handed, and I find that I have a much easier time working the ash tool from the right side of the draft door with my right hand. Thus far I’ve always aligned the fire box to be centered with the draft door (per the instructions). This time I tried something new.
Since I work the ash tool from the right hand side, I put the ash tool into the draft door and then put the fire box in so that it was also aligned on the right side. The result is that I have a lot of open space that I can work the ash tool over and am much more effective at getting ash out as needed. (If you are left-handed I would align the draft door and fire box to the left side.) I also have very little need to work the ash tool with my left hand since I can reach most of the chamber from the right.
In these pictures the ash tool is inserted along the right hand side of the draft door and fire box. For a refresher on what the fire box, fire ring are see the Big Green Egg components section of their website.
For what I believe is the third time I downloaded my RAW files off of my compact flash card, put it back in the camera and formatted the card. Then, remembered that I didn’t download the video I took with the 5D Mark II. Ugh.
Next Olympic venue?
Aaron Kaercher & His Crazy Neighbors playing outside at Northern Grounds Cafe in Ely, MN.
“Welcome to the W-E-L-Y Ely Timberwolves High School Football radio pre-game show.” - WELY 94.5 FM
iTunes 9 Removes Old iPhone Restore Images
Upon upgrading to iTunes 9 today I noticed that some old iPhone restore images had been dumped in my trash. I’m not real sure where they were being kept before, but the trash now had this stuff in it.
Nifty. That cleared up 1,793 MB of storage that was never going to be used again. Especially the files for iPhone 1,1 - a device I don’t even own anymore.
Freezer Canning Tomatoes
For the first time I decided to try some canning. I didn’t feel confident enough to do real canning, so I’m just doing some freezer canning. I got 20 pounds of tomatoes at the Mill City Farmers Market over the weekend. They were organically grown on a farm about 70 miles outside of town. I cleaned them all and ran them through the food processor. I put the whole lot into a big kettle and reduced it at low heat for a few hours, just stirring every 30 minutes or so.
I got 12 pints of tomato sauce out of it. I chose to not put anything into the sauce so I can use it in anything I want. I’m going to place these in the freezer for some local tomato dishes this winter. The house smelled really nice while the tomatoes where simmering down.