Dirty Rat Spammers (Photo) Rant

Dirty Rat Spammers are trying to ruin my blog. That's what I'm going to rant about today.  After recieving many emails from folks who tried to comment but couldn't, last night I went and changed my settings. Anyone could comment but, I still had to approve the comments. And they did.

Some witch named Kate from Affordable Coursework Help (dot) com and another dirty rat from Sagittarius Tatto Design (dot) com who was smart enough to not leave his name.

The two Dirty Rats just posted a sweet comment and pasted some advertising links on my blog.

Well, just by coincidence, I happened to notice a dead, dirty rat my Huskies caught violating their space this morning and snapped a shot of it with my cellular. So, here it is. It fits perfectly.

Now, I've become a fairly non-violent person in my old age and pretty much leave people around the world alone to their own doings. If they want to be dirty rats, that's their own business and just fine and dandy with me.

Spammers, who think they can just paste advertising links on a blog I'm trying to run ad free are DIRTY RATS and I really don't like to come here and post a RANT but, something needs to be done about this. It's a worldwide problem somebody needs to get under control.

To my blog readers, I'm sorry but, I had to crank the security back up again and will have to closely monitor all comments for approval until I can figure out a better way.  It's really a shame.

To me, it's just as much a crime as going around the neighborhood and painting an advertisement on someone's home.  I wish the problem could be solved as effectively as my Huskies handled it.

Like can't the United Nations, World Bank, G20 or somebody gather all the Dirty Rat Spammers up and dip them in Boiling Canola Oil or something?  Just long enough to make them stop !

Outa Your Face Advertising

Call this a Rant.  Call me crazy if you want. Here's what I'm going to do:

                                                  OUTA YOUR FACE ADVERTISING

There's money in advertising, I know.  I want some, too.  It helps pay bills.  That'd be nice.

People come here to look at pictures and some of them read.  That's why I put stuff here.

If they think anything like I do, they don't want to see IN YOUR FACE ADVERTISING, like:

Pop-ups saying "YOU WON !"   "THIS IS NO JOKE"  "YOU ARE THE 100,000th VISITOR !"

Or,  Meet Russian, Chinese, Swiss Chocolate, French Maid, Beautiful, Single, Girls, NOW !

College Degrees Online,  Cheap Flights, Boat Rides, Hotels, Property, Massages, anywhere !

My plan is to have absolutely no advertising on this page.  I'll be moving what little I have here already off the page to my Advertising Department. That's going to take people who really can't wait to go shopping somewhere else. I will only have 1st class advertising, like products I would recommend or use myself.  I'll even do product reviews but, it will be on a different site, not here  where it distracts people who came to read and look at pictures, from reading and looking at pictures.

Please bear with me.  This will take me awhile.  There's no need to keep clicking on my Advertising Department to see the Outa Your Face Advertising because there's nothing there, yet. I have to get some gurus to help me organize it first.  I'll let you know when it's ready.

The way I figure, even if I don't make anything from Outa Your Face Advertising, it'll only be about twice what I'm not making already.  Does that make any cents (Spelchek, Shh !) to you?

Buddha on Thursday (Photo) for Budget Travelers Travel Photo Thursday

This Smiling Buddha resides in Okinawa, Japan not 50 yards from where I live. I could see him everytime I leave the house if the owners hadn't built a big wall and fence around the place.

He's on the grounds of an establishment that charges an entrance fee. Sometimes, I pay to go in because it's the right thing to do. But, if I don't have any pocket change to spare and I want to see Buddha and make sure he still has that big smile and hasn't lost any weight I have to climb the fence. So, that's what I do !

This photo is my donation to TRAVELERS PHOTO FRIDAY AT BUDGET TRAVELERS SANDBOX.

Truck Culture in Japan: An Insider's Tip (Photo Essay)

There is a subculture in Japan among Truckers. Truck Yaro or Deco-Tora is an art form inspired by a 1970's movie series with titles like, "Bullets 'n' Babes", "Run, Truck Rascal, Run" and a few others probably not fit to print on a family-friendly blog.

Think "Smokey and the Bandit" from 1970's and make it an X Rated comedy and it would probably be as popular as Truck Yaro is in Japan today.

Now, Okinawa is an island only about 65 miles long so, we don't have the long haul trucks with 18 wheels and a trailer (or two) big enough for me to live in but, that doesn't keep us from putting a little chrome, gold, platinum and some extra lights on our heavy haulers. Here's a series of photos I shot at a gathering before I ever knew what Truck Yaro was and kinda sneaked up on them with caution.

This was at a Cherryblossom Festival in Okinawa around January time of the year.

Moving around, I'd snap a shot here and there from positions where no one could see me.

This shot was taken from ground level.  I was in the drainage ditch.

Coming up out of the ditch to shoot the trucks from another angle, I got spotted. So, I figured I might as well try and make friends. That's what I do.

Truck Yaro people aren't a bunch of gangsters. They're real nice people who just happen to be truck artists.

They take pride in their trucks and like to show them off. When they aren't driving, they like to drink and dance and play real loud music.

Music loud enough to wake up the dead, that's what I'm talking about !

So, if you happen to be driving somewhere in mainland Japan and see a whole convoy of great, gaudy, humongous, big, heavy hauling rigs with artwork painted on the sides, don't be afraid of them.

Hang out the window, pretend you're pulling the chain on an air horn and yell "Wu Hu Hu" or act like you have a CB radio and say stuff like "Come again, 10-4,  Catch ya on the flipside" or whatever they said on Smokey and the Bandit. They'll probably love it and think you have some culture, too!

Photography Tip: Crop a Digital Photo

With today’s Photography Tip I hope to accomplish two things:

1. Demonstrate what a crop on a digital photo does to your picture.

2. Show you that you don’t really need a 21 Mega Pixel Camera unless you happen to be in the business of printing your photos for pasting on billboards.

There are two methods I use in cropping a photo.

One is called the in-camera crop. That is done by moving in or zooming-in to remove anything, you don’t want to appear in your picture before you take the shot.

The other crop is done after the photo has been taken. It is an editing crop which you do on your computer. The editing crop is what I’ll show you today.

An excerpt from an oldie when I was a Camera Talk Guy:

“Sometimes the shot you thought was perfectly composed and had the best focus, exposure, color and contrast when you saw it on your LCD screen is a big letdown when you see it on your monitor after downloading at home. You reviewed the shot on a 2-3 inch screen but, after you download, the photo is enlarged on a 15, 17, or larger inch screen and something you hadn’t noticed shows up in your photo. A cigarette butt, plastic bag, beer can or a black speck of dust in blue water or a clear blue sky; your photo is ruined.

Don’t feel bad. It happens to all of us. There are folks who buy programs to clone out distractions and touch-up their digital photos but, I guess you could call me a purist (or a stubborn old mule), I’m not buying anything that causes me to spend more time in front of a computer and less time out shooting my camera. So, I crop to some standard dimensions. Then, I move the crop around over the photo and if I can’t remove the distraction and still have an interesting composition, DELETE it.”

Here are some examples of crops on a digital photo:

First: An original 10 Mega Pixel photo as it came from the camera.

From the same photo: A 6 Mega Pixel Crop.

Again, from the same photo cropped to 4 Mega Pixels and vertically instead of horizontally.
 

 
A view showing the area I am cropping from the original photo during editing. This gives me:
 

 
A 1 Mega Pixel Photo, cropped from the original 10 Megapixel Photo. Cropping is also sometimes called "The Poor Man's Zoom Lens".  Now you know why.
 
When you crop a photo, it becomes enlarged and, as long as you had a steady camera and noise-free photo, you can enlarge a lot before loosing any quality in the sharpness.

Earlier, I mentioned some standard dimensions, so, I’d better explain. Your camera software or even the computer you’re using may already have photo cropping features built in to them. No need to rush out and buy some fancy editing program. Just use standard dimensions that you’d use for printing your personal photos 3x5”, 4x6”, 8x10” and so forth.

In cropping photos over the years, I have gotten into the habit of using Pixels as my method because I deal with an international audience and just got tired of worrying about conversions, inches, centimeters and whatever the rest of the world is using at the moment. I researched camera manuals and online and wrote these dimensions down and use them everyday. In fact, have used them so often, I no longer need to look them-up when I crop; they’re memorized. If your software permits use these and you can’t go wrong when printing photos. Print these or come back here and visit when you’re ready to start cropping.

Megapixel                                            Horizontal                                   Vertical

10                                                       3872x2592                                 2592x3872

8                                                         3264x2448                                 2448x3264

6                                                         3008x2000                                 2000x3008

5                                                         2560x1920                                 1920x2560

4                                                         2304x1728                                 1728x2304

3                                                         2048x1536                                 1536x2048

2                                                         1536x1024                                 1024x1536

1                                                         1024x768                                     768x1024

Note: Some camera manufacturers have different pixel counts (as much as 200 pixels more or less) difference at the 10 Megapixel size between width and height of the photo. Don’t be concerned about it when cropping. These dimensions will work when cropping for printing; tried and true.

From some of the mail I receive I’ve learned that there’s a lot of confusion out there when it comes to the Multi-Mega Pixel Cameras on the market these days. Hopefully, this photography tip makes both the crop of a digital photo and Mega Pixels a little easier to understand. Buying someone a 21 Mega Pixel Camera for Christmas might be like buying them an 18 Wheel Truck when all they needed was a Little Red Wagon.

Happy Holidays !