philly

There's a ton of evens Saturday September 29th and I hope to make it to a bunch of them…

• *Flea Market at 22nd St and Fairmount Ave (9a - 5p) woops, this is next Saturday
• *Farm to City Farmers' Market at Rittenhouse from 10a - 2p
• *Food Trust Farmers' Market at Clark Park from 10a - 2p
• *Old City Sidewalk Sale from Noon - 7p
• *Campus Philly Kickoff on the Parkway from 10a - 7p
• *2nd Annual Midtown Village Fair at 13th St and Sansom Sts from Noon - 8p featuring Oktoberfest at Ludwigs Garten, which, according to Brad will be closing soon. I'm sad to see that place go - their food and their beer selection rocks.

UPDATE
And in the end, I only got out to walk through the Midtown Village Fair for a bit on the way to dinner with some friends.

Lady and I have been settling into our new place and we've been hoping to get a really cool wireless print server so we can stick the gigantic hand me down multi function printer someplace where it wouldn't get in the way. After some research, I found out that we'd a specific kind of print server to do the job and settled on this one. It's the one referenced in the title of the post.

I just finished setting it all up on my laptop and Lady's laptop. It was a little bit of an ordeal as the documentation isn't so hot. Some notes to people who end up on this post via a search…

*Make sure the driver for the printer you have is installed on all of your computers
*Before installing the Print Server, TURN OFF YOUR FIREWALL
*Setup the Print Server drivers from the supplied CD first
*Setup the Computer in the second part of the installation
*To install additional computers, you do not have to do the Setup Print Server step, just the Setup Computer step

As far as firewalls go, I have Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security. Even though I manually select the utility on the exceptions list, no dice - the utility cannot connect to the print server. But, if I turn off the PC-cillin firewall to print, the utility can connect to the firewall. Annoying. The other workaround I've discovered is to turn off the PC-cillin firewall utility altogether and enable the Windows Firewall and list the print server as an exception [C:\Program Files\Linksys Wireless-G Print Server\PSDiagnosticM.exe] - works like a charm. Why the PC-cillin exception doesn't work, I have no clue.

Basic printing is pretty quick with this thing. I tried scanning using Photoshop CS2 and it was horribly slow. I should not that we're using an old Netgear 802.11b router so the throughput isn't as high as a 802.11a/g/n router would get, but still. It took forever for the scan to get started and the data transmission was quite slow once the scan started. Good thing I don't do too much scanning. I think that if we upgrade to an 802.11a/g/n router, it could fix the throughput problem. Who knows. Update: I've tried scanning again and it works like a charm. I think I had a print job going as well and that slowed down the data transferring back and forth.

I haven't tried the faxing option just yet, but it would be cool to try it out. I'd need to get a splitter and a long phone line though - boo wires. We'll see. Maybe I can find a cheap one on craigslist. Hmmmm. That way, I can bring the 802.11b router I have now home to NY and install it on my parent's network. That would be good for when I'm home so that I wouldn't have to use their desktop to waste time online instead of catching up on some sleep assuming I'm home taking a break from things for one reason or another.

It's pretty magical how this thing works. I love technology. Right now, it's across the room. We're thinking of moving it upstairs, but it's in a good and out of the way spot right now not taking up much room in a corner. We'll see how the space is used and if we need that corner, we can schlep it upstairs.

And as a final note, our printer, an HP OfficeJet 9100, was not on the 'supported printers' list on the Linksys website. But it works fine. The printing and the scanning work fine. If your printer isn't on the list, I wouldn't sweat it - unless it's a new fan-cay one with crazy bells and whistles attached to it. Our is an old inkjet.

I got me some jury duty in less than 7 hours. Ugh. This is the second time I've been called for jury duty in my < 4 years here in Philly. What's the deal?!

The last time I was called was 2 years 5 months and 21 days ago. I guess I'm just lucky eh?

I'm packing lots of reading material. My latest National Geographic which has an interesting sounding feature on biofuels. And my latest issue of The Nation with a feature on Keith Olbermann.

UPDATE
I was picked for a jury [again!] and then we were dismissed because the plaintiff failed to show in court. I walked out of the Criminal Justice Center all of $9 richer.

God damn I love Mural City. I see incredible murals all over town. Hidden away in alleyways and behind buildings and in places I've passed by tons of times and just, for one reason or another, noticed. The photo above is one panel of many of a huge mural under the overpass at Callowhill and 2nd St. A gigantic 4424px x 600px [900KB] version of the whole thang, stitched together quickly using Autostitch can be downloaded here.

I was biking back to Center City from NoLibs and I saw this coming up on my right and immediately hopped the curb and into the parking lot. It stretches around two corners and up to the next wall at the westernmost part of the mural. It is awesome. Peep the Mural Arts website for more mural goodness.

All the murals I've taken photos of are in my murals flickr set including the individual panels that make up the gigantic mural.

Anyone have a favorite mural out there? I know Steve has to have at least a dozen he could list off the top of his head.

I went to Flava Fest 2007 on Friday night to take photos for Freshout Media [who just relaunched their website]. It was a weekend-long festival showcasing Philly's finest hip hoppers, bboys and bgirls, graff artists, MCs and more. The event I went to was at F.U.E.L. in Old City and it was a freestyle MC battle along with a bboy battle. Above is a shot of one of the many areas where people were pulling off moves I can only dream of doing in video games.

A few more shots from the night:

The freeze-staredown.

Bending in ways my body doesn't understand.

And the threads were tight.

I love going to these events. The energy is always incredible. I put up a quick set on flickr of 37 shots with no post processing. This was my first outing with my new gear. Oh yeah, I bought me a new camera, more on that in a sec. Thank you Chris for the invite and a belated Happy Birthday to Jill.

I got a Nikon D200 with the vertical grip. I also picked up a SB 800 flash. Why did I get this new gear? Well, my trusty D70 and SB 600 have been acting up a bit more than normal lately and I'm shooting a wedding next week and can't afford for them to die on me.

So, I'll be using a two body setup during the wedding. It should be fun. I'll have the D200 paired up with the 80-200mm f/2.8 and the D70 with the 17-55mm f/2.8 during the ceremony and switch that setup for the reception.

The D200 has been great so far. An incredibly fast and responsive body - much quicker than the D70. A good deal heavier too with the vertical grip and 2 batteries, but better balanced with a big lens. Oh but I always want more!

Have you seen this man?

I've told a few friends of mine, but I think it's time to share my findings with the world. Democratic At-Large City Councilman Bill Greenlee is fucking everywhere.

I see him all over Center City. Washington Square West. City Hall. LOVE Park. Rittenhouse Square. It's crazy. And it's not like he particularly sticks out in a crowd either - he's just another dude in a suit - so I must be missing some sightings as well.

It's almost at the point where if I don't see him randomly - I'm not talking about at political events, that's cheating - every week or so, I'm gonna start worrying. Crazy. It's my own personal Twilight Zone or something. Ask Lady, I'm always saying "That's Bill Greenlee!" as we walk by him… everywhere.

Above is a shot of the Councilman in front of the 9th and Market Sts Post office on the Market St side. He was just chillin at about 5.30p on Friday.

Was yesterday.

I quit my job at PhillyCarShare for various reasons. Things just didn't work out.

In other news, Lady and I have moved to a new house. Moving out from our old digs into our new place was an arduous month-long experience and we're still settling in. It was a unique move into a very, very nice house which is being rented out for the first time. Lots of the owner's stuff is still in there and we still have plenty to move downstairs, but it's shaping up nicely. I've put together more IKEA furniture (and smartly, I bought my ass a ratcheting driver set with an allen bit) than I can remember already and I'm sure there's more to come. I've also made use of a cool radial arm saw in the basement to custom cut some stuff to make it match the height of our bedroom wall which is in the upstairs section of our loft space. We're very happy.

I'm looking forward to some time off to get the house up to speed and to think about where I'm headed down the line. I'll be taking on jobs here and there for various people and doing freelance photog work too which will be great. I have a bunch of photo orders to process and that'll all happen quicker now that I have the time to do so (no excuses!).

Our internet has yet to be hooked up (day 15 now). Comcast came by today and did some custom drilling into the house. We still have to get the regular installation technician to come by and take it from the new wall plate to the living room. I'll be eating goodies and riding the WiFi at The Last Drop for some time to come I guess. At least the food is good here :)