Tonight I implemeted a new captcha system you must fill out before leaving a comment.  I have used it many times in testing and I can attest that they are relatively easy to figure out.  Not near as complicated as some. I am using a service called "reCAPTCHA" that not only implements a captcha system to distinguish the humans from the robots, but also helps make the world a better place by having humans help computers digitize books.  When digitizing books, the computer can have difficultly reading all the word perfectly.  Human interaction is needed when the computer can't make out the word.  That's where reCAPTCHA comes to the rescue.  The system will give you two words to type.  One of the word images is known, the other not known.  If the human solves the known word, it is assumed that the unknown word is correct.  It is of course sent to many people to help reduce anomilies.

I'm sorry to make you jump through so many hoops to leave a comment, but I'm hoping that now I won't have to ignore half my incoming emails beacuase of spammers.

Also, this was all developed in my new dev environment/setup. Watch for more to come.

I’ve spent my first full week here down a the lake and wanted to do a quick update of things I’m liking, not liking, and having to get used to.

Text version below:

Things I love so far about being unemployeed at the Lake.

- Big table / desk to spread out on and work at
- The view
- Laying down whenever I feel like it
- Cooking.  I never minded cooking before, but it is easier now.  I know I can’t just run out a get fast food (40 min drive round trip just driving) so I know that if I cook something I will eat the left overs tomorrow.  In Atlanta I was always going out with friends at lunch (to get out of the office for a bit) and never remembered how old left-overs were left in the fridge so I didn’t eat them.
- Vent at my feet. I have a vent right under my desk / table and it blows hot air on me whenever it kicks on allowing me to work in my dream work dress… gym shorts and a t-shirt.

Things I’m not sure about:
- Cocoa the dog.  I like having her around and keeping me company, but she gets me up every morning at 8 for no good reason.  I let her out and she’s back at the door in 5 minutes.  I hope she is just not settled in yet and will become more comfortable with all the room she has outside soon enough.

Things I am going to work on:
- Procrastination.  I have no dead lines or anyone hounding me so I do what I want.  Which is good until I put off something way past when I should have done it.
- Living without a dishwasher.  Washing dishes by hand sucks.

Today is my last day at Nexidia.  It seems like just yesterday that I started here fresh out of college.  (How cliche is that?)  I have really enjoyed my tenure at Nexidia starting in the two man QA team, seeing it grow to six people, and graduating to be one of the first of the newly formed "Software Engineer in Test" team.  I have seen the company grow from around 20 people (I think my employee number is in the 20's from my internship there while in school), to somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 folks.  I've had seven managers, if you include the brief time I managed myself, and made countless friends through the years. At the time of my leaving, I am the oldest employee in development in years at the company, but still one of the youngest in age.  I fully believe in the technology and people at Nexidia and will be looking for big things to happen with them in the coming years.

Leaving is going to be bitter-sweet.  While I have enjoyed working for Nexidia, I am excited about my new venture.  What new venture you might ask?  Well I'm going out on my own.  I have had an itch for a while now to try working for myself and the timing has all lined up for me to scratch that itch.  I don't really have a fully fledged out plan for what I will be doing, but I just know I have lots of ideas for things I would like to build, but rarely have the time to dedicate to each of them.  I'm going to be moving to my family's lake house in Eufaula Alabama at the first of the year to be in isolation for the winter.  I am both excited about what lies before me and terrified that I have left a good job during the most dire of economical times in my lifetime.  But the best explanation I can come up with on why I am doing this came from an early conversation I had with my Dad.  As he said, if I don't do this now, I might never do it, and next thing I know I'll be 50 wishing I had.

I would also like to take this time to ask for some help.  While I have saved up enough money to live job free for a while, I am always looking for some additional income.   So aside from your prayers and well wishes, if you could keep your eyes and ears peeled for small web projects I'd appreciate it.  I am not really looking for any full time work, but if you know of anyone who might be looking to get a website built, please forward them my information or contact me with theirs.

I will of course be documenting the process here on my blog.  So stay tuned....

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I took a ride up to north Georgia this past weekend to check out the leaves changing color.  The leaves were awesome and the ride was good too.  My favorite part was my lunch spot.  I grabbed a sandwich at one of the little towns I stopped in and decided to find a place to eat it.  I found a nice little grove of trees to pull off in and had myself an Easy Riders moment.  I always loved in that movie how they would just pull off somewhere and sleep next to their bikes.  No need for a hotel or campsite.  Just an open spot to get away.  My lunch was nice and peaceful. 

The only downer to my trip was when a yellow jacket flew into my coat and stung me on the arm.  It has been itching for almost a week now and was swollen for at least 3 days.  But I'll trade that for all the fun I had.

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Oh a whim this weekend I took a one day photography class.  While I've been practicing photography for years now and know some of the general techniques to use.  I've always been confused about how to know what manual settings to use in certain situations.  This class cleared a lot of those things up.

Somethings I learned:

- Aperture (the size of the hole opened to let light in) is measured in what are called f-stops.  I learned a little history behind this setting.  The first film was very hard to expose, and therefore the camera needed as much light as possible.  This meant the photographer left the  lens wide open.  As film advanced and photographers needed to limit the light getting to the film they started putting medal plates over the lens.  This hole started getting smaller and smaller and f-stops started getting larger and larger.

- Aperture is also what one uses to create the "shallow depth of field" look on images.  A shallow depth of field is best seen in pictures where part of the picture is crisp and the rest is blurry, like out of focus.  What is interesting about this is that for the longest time, shallow depth of field was really easy to capture.  What was difficult was having everything in focus.  Now with digital cameras it's the opposite.  If you look at lots of the pictures the little point and shoot cameras take, everything is in focus (larger depth of field) and it has become more difficult to capture a shallow depth of field photo.

- We looked a good collection of Ansel Adams pictures.  While almost everyone can see one of his photos and enjoy the beauty of it, I have learned to appreciate how far ahead of his time he was. We often take for granted how sharp and clear his photos were, when they were really hard to capture that way.  Like I mentioned above, in the olden days, it was hard to capture large depth of field photos (everything is in focus).  He went to extreme lengths to take beautiful depth of field photos all around California.

- I also learned about shutter speed.  I've learned through practice that there is really a limit to how slow you can have a shutter while holding it by hand.  I never really knew the limit but learned this week that 1/60th of a second is really about as slow as you want to take photo holding it by hand

- Something else I learned recently, though not at this class, is the rule of 32 in photography.  I'm not sure who'd blog I found it on, but they were pointing out that a photography teacher they had told them about this rule.  In the film days you could usually get 32 photos per roll of film.  Out of those 32 pictures you should be able to select 1 photo to keep.  In this age of digital cameras we are of the opinion that they are digital and cost nothing to keep taking, which leads us to have lots of mediocre pictures.  I am really bad about this.  I like to post lots of pictures and share a mediocre picture just because so-in-so is in it.  While I'll probably keep doing that for people shots, I'm working hard to stick to the rule of 1 in 32 rule for "artistic" pictures I take.  It's hard not to share everything, but I think it will be better in the long run.  Put my best photos out there, ya know?

I'm excited about what I learned this weekend and can't wait to go take some more photos.  For now, here are some random shots I took practicing this weekend.  Nothing terribly exciting, but it is close to that rule of 32.

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