Monday January 8, 2007 8:00 am Lethbridge Sunrise 8:27 Sunset 16:49 Hours of daylight: 8:22

A. Morning Musings

8:00 am It is -1 C at the moment with a high of 0 C forecast.

Monday morning is coffee at The Ugly Mug. A great way to begin the week.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at noon

B. Plan

Immediate
Health	Walk & exercise	1 hr
Technology	Begin reading "iPhoto"	1 hr
	Purchase a digital photo storage device (Epson P-3000)	4 hr
	digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "Virginia Woolf: The Inner Life" by Julia Briggs	1 hr
Later
Chores	Investigate water softeners for home
Technology	Read manual for cell phone
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
Mathematics	Read "Fearless Symmetry" chap 9: Elliptic Curves
Model Trains	Add ground cover to oil refinery diorama
	Continue assembly of coaling tower
	Purchase DCC system
History	Read Watson "Ideas"
Philosophy	Read & make notes for "Breaking the Spell"
GO	Complete reading "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #10

C. Actual/Note

8:10 am I have posted the link to my model train website ( Model Train Journal )on The Gauge forum. Now to see if I receive any feedback.

	Technology 04 January 8
Technology Notes
7:05 PM today I Learned a lot about memory cards (for cameras) I was able to find a local store that had a Epson P-3000 photo storage device. Fantastic. I went downtown and quickly bought it. I asked if I could try it out in the store, but that was not possible as the battery for the device was not yet charged. I took it home - they said I could bring it back within 15 days if it didn't work. It took about 4 hours for the lithium-ion battery to charge. I then opened the manual and went through the start up steps. I managed, with no difficulty, to get it initialized, and then I put the SD (secure-digital) memory card from my camera (after I had taken a few pictures) into the Epson. The screen immediately came up with a message saying it could NOT read the memory card because it was either damaged or unformatted. Very strange as the card worked fine in the camera. I phoned the Epson help desk and after a exchanging a few details they were able to determine that my particular 2 GB card was too fast. It has the numbers 150X on it. The tech department said that the P-3000 could only handle speeds up to 80X. I pointed out that there was no documentation that indicated speed was a potential problem, only that 2 GB was the maximum size that was allowed. I then phoned the store to see if they had a 2 GB memory card that was rated as 80X. They didn't really know. The problem is that many manufacturers describe their card in terms of MB/sec. I got on the Web and using google was able to find a site that showed how to convert from X to MB. It turns out that 80X is about equivalent to 10MB/s. Back to the store to see if this would work. I took my camera with me, took a memory card called a SanDisk Ultra II 2.0 GB which had Read 10 MB/s and Write 9 MB/s on the carton in small print (which seemd worth a try) and put it in my camera. Good. I then took a couple of quick pictures. Good. I then took the card out of my camera and put it in the P-3000. It quickly downloaded the two images. Excellent. I bought the memory card and now have a working system. Two trips to the store plus 1 hour trying to set up the P-3000, 1 hour trying to figure out what was the problem, 1 hour working on a solution. Still, I am pleased with the P-3000, so it was all worth it. But it wasn't easy. I now have a storage device for holding 40 GB of images. I can download images directly from my camera and store them on the P-3000 until I am near my laptop and can download them to my iPhoto library. This should prove handy when travelling. The P-3000 has a strong battery and thus I only need to take my camera and the P-3000 when on a trip. I can also view the images on a 4" screen. SUMMARY of the session: I learned a lot about the importance of the speed rating for memory cards.

D. Reflection

9:30 PM Much of the day was devoted to the Epson P-3000. It is a cool photo storage device with an excellent playback capability. It has raised my interest in improving my general digital photography skills. Hopefully I will make more progress on this tomorrow.