This year I decided to treat myself big time for Christmas.  I decided that after 4-5 years of using a Nikon D70s it was a time for upgrade.  After a lot of tought and deliberation I decided to go ahead and get myself a brand new Nikon D300s.

As good as D70s served me I did have a few issues with it.  Most notable was a tiny viewfinder and relatively in-flexible AF system.  In addition the high ISO noise was not something everyone would be comfortable with, but I learned how to shoot dance at 800 ISO, which produced decent photos.  For the most part the noise at high ISO was not as much of a problem as the loss of contrast was.  As soon as I bump the D70s to 800 ISO or past it, the photo contrast, vibrance and general color reproduction go to hell.   When this is coupled with a plethora of dance photos I take it really bums me out when I loose a lot of color dynamics from the stage lights.  This was good enough for me to force an upgrade.

More…

Since I got a whole week off between Christmas and New Years I did a lot of work on my home network.  I upgraded all of my machines to the latest possible versions.  I even moved my router/firewall from Gentoo to Debian Lenny system.  This was a big job since it was not a simple upgrade.  I also moved it from a hard disk based system to a CF card one.  This seems to work great.  Basically CF card gets mounted as read-only and everything that’s needed during system run is written to a temporary filesystem in RAM.  This goes around the problem where CF cards die if a number of writes exceeds around 100,000, or so depending on a card.  The instructions I used are available here, they are a pretty good start, but I needed to tweak them a bit to get everything I need for this machine to work, mainly DNS/DHCP server and webmin.

Work brought me to LA for the week.   I left on Monday at 3:30pm and I should be coming back on Friday morning.  We’re basically having a series of meetings,  for the project I’m on and I’m on the hook to present a few things.  I’m staying at a Hilton in Canoga Park, it’s pretty nice.   Since I got a rent-a-car I’ll try and go out and visit various places.  Last night I went to Santa Monica and it was pretty nice.  The coast down here is definitely different than the one we have in Seattle.  I saw bunch of pelicans which was kind of cool.  Saw them dive bomb the fishies.

I’ve got a BUNCH of photos finished up so I will be posting them to the website hopefully this coming weekend.

Went to Dunn’s river falls yesterday.  It was an incredible experience.  Hiked up from the beach to the top of the waterfalls.  With the camera in my hand and it didn’t get wet, yes!!! I got a lot of awesome pictures that I will upload when I get back home.

Today is also the last full day of Jamaican experience.  Headed to Kingston around 2pm local time and will probably just do some chilling at UWI’s Mona campus.  I think the plan is to go to some restaurant so we don’t have to eat KFC again .

Should be landing in Seattle around 8pm on Sunday.  There will be a big Jamaica slideshow and music party at my house afterwards.  You will be notified on Facebook and here.

On Friday I went and took the photos of performances.  It was pretty good.  I ended up taking photos of the girls as well as Koleidoscope and the Estonian dance company.  Koleidoscope is somewhat of a sister company to Enertia, since Danielle was a part of it when she was little.  The Estonians just had a great dance that I had to take photos of.  Can’t wait to work on them and post them up.  It is hard to be a bunch of hot blond girls doing a bizarre modern piece .  Rest of the day we spent relaxing in the pool.

Saturday was another big photo day since the final dance was happening so we stuck around the UWI campus and rehearsed in the morning and then did the parade in the evening.  The dances were decent, but the scenery and the general feel to everything was amazing.  There was a lot of diversity and everyone was in a great mood.  After the parade there was a big dance hall style party with food and more dancing.   That night I spent sleeping on the floor in Sammie and Stacy’s room.  I never managed to get a 3rd night at the hotel since it was all booked up.

Sunday was the big travel day.  We headed out to Montego Bay from Kingston.  The ride was about 3.5 hours along the windy mountain roads.  We arived at Sandals Inn around 3pm.  This place is great.  Very quiet, clean and close to all the action.  One downside is that it’s a total couples place.  It made it ackward at times, but we had a big group so it sort of worked out.  I ended up sharing a room with Sammie.  We spent most of the day chilling at the pool and enjoying the all inclusivness of the place.  It was a big change from eating KFC and Jamaican patties in Kingston .  We met some new people and most importantly the bartender Jonathan and entertainment guy Loco Ray.  These guys completely made our vacation. 

On Monday we went to Sandals Montego Bay.  It’s another resort that we had all the privileges at and it was much larger and a lot more fun.  There we spent the day sailing, snorkeling and lounging at the beach.  I managed to get a sunburn which took me out of commission.  We ended up playing Bingo at one point as well, were I met Nardya, a real Jamaican queen.  She’s one of the entertainment folks at the resort.  That night there was a beach party followed by the outing at the Margaritaville club. I ended up leaving kind of early since my sunburn was killing me.

On Tuesday we did some shopping at the local craft market and some of the shops on the strip in Montego Bay.   After that we went back to Sandals at Montego Bay.  I spent most of the day hanging out with Nardya.  They had some parties at night and she was working through most of the night, but she did managed to show me a lot of photos of her.  She’s apparently a lingerie model in her spare time.  I was sad that I never managed to get a photo of me and her together, but we exchanged contact info and we will definitely keep in touch. 

Wednesday we headed to Ocho Rios.  It was an 1.5 hour ride from Montego Bay right along the coast.  The place we stayed in is Jamaican Grande and it’s a lot more touristy and a lot more crowded place than either of the Sandals spots.   We reserved some dinners at the restaurants and spend the time chilling.  This place is much nicer at night since the night sky looks a lot better.  Montego Bay didn’t have that great of a night sky since the airport was close by and the lights from it were making the sky too bright.  Wednesday turned out to be one of those “do nothing all day” days. 

Thursday we ended up shopping for some stuff and I finally got me some music and a bag to carry all my souvenirs back in.  I’m now on a hunt for a perfect native mask.  I think I found one at this gift store, but will have to double check.  Rest of the day the girls spent at the pool, while I was afraid to expose my still slightly burned body to the elements.  We also ate at a Chinese restaurant here at the resort, and surprisingly it was not bad at all .

I woke up early today, Friday, even though I spent the night at some clubs and singalong spots at the resort and was the last person to hit the bed.  I think that nap I took yesterday did some good.  Today we’ll try and go to the falls, but I’m not sure now since there is a big downpour.  Lets hope it doesn’t last.