About 2 years ago I found myself(and a couple hundred others) caught in a layoff. The best job prospect I had at the time was 300 miles away from home. This put me driving home every other weekend. Being away from home puts a strain on things, but I live for road trips so this was sort of a mixed curse/blessing for me. Also, It wasn’t just any 300 miles. It was 300 miles of some of my favorite roads in the state, crossing several of my old stomping grounds.

on one trip while passing thru one of my favorite valleys I couldn’t help but stop and take a picture of this really cool granite plateau that was sticking up out of the center of the valley. I’d seen it many times, but for some reason it caught my eye differently than it ever had before. It was almost magical. The only thing it was missing was some sort of castle or fortress built on top of it. My picture taken, I got back on the bike and headed on. The rest of the trip and to be honest up until a few weeks ago, I’ve tossed around the idea of who those people would be that lived in that fortress. What would their story be.

Every fortress has something it protects, I figured a princess or a magical artifact have already been done. It has to be something that gives the people who live there a purpose. Something that would be coveted by others. Who hasn’t heard of the expression, knowledge is power.

A library would be protected within the great keep and those that protected it would be guildsmen who have sworn to preserve knowledge and skills so that they are not lost to time.

Ok, so maybe only a book worm like myself would find the idea of a university in a medeval setting noble or romantic. But there had to be something I could do with this. Who would be the protagonists, the counter culture that feared or envied this wealth of knowledge that the Guildsmen protected. I was at a blank.

A few weeks ago we were at a convention and I kept noticing a large turnout of what I guess is called steampunk type characters. They were really cool, but I couldn’t help but think that everything from the cloth to the hardware of their costumes looked recycled. That was it.

Two cultures living side by side with opposing views on what technology should be. One culture that believes that a person should learn how everything is done from the bottom up and looks on the other culture as scavengers. The other culture believes in holding onto and reusing what ever they can find but looks on the first group as extremist even cultist.

They live side by side each on separate sides of a great river and connected by their love for the land on which they live and an old metal bridge built in a previous era.

So it is that i introduce you to a magical land where the only magic is knowledge.

The Guildsmen of Marble

Chapter 1 [link]

Chapter 2 [link]

Don't get me wrong, I love my current camera (Canon), but all too often I miss the simplicity of my old Pentax. no Modes, no Processor, no LCD. what it did have that I miss most of all was a very functional interface. I liked the needle indicators in the sight window. I liked that I could change anything with out ever taking my eyes off the subject.

I'm not looking to swap out for a new camera, but I'm not some zealot who only buys products from one company either. Those who do make excuses saying they are "loyal" or some other B.S.

I'd like to hear from others what their current or past favorite cameras were/are and why.
what made them work for you?

In our family we have what we call Juanita Barns. These are old barns that are weathered, sun cooked, and normally leaning if not partially fallen. They are called this because my grandma Juanita loved to paint and take pictures of them.

Sunday driving back from San Antonio we were on the last stretch from Glen Rose to Cleburne when we passed this old barn I’d seen a thousand times.
In north Texas most barns are all wood. This one was all rock on the front and back with a half rock/half wood on the sides. The roof was tin, but curved with an arch that ran the length. Not pointed like most you would see. The style of stone work is very common in the hill country and can be traced back to Bavaria Germany but it’s the only one I’ve seen in this part of the state. The curved roof made it look more like a WWI aircraft hangar. I could easily picture old biplanes sitting out on the grassy field beside it.

I’ve always wanted to stop and take pictures of it because it’s so unique but never taken the time. After 4 hours of a 5 hour trip you get tunnel vision and all you think about is getting home. That was the case this past Sunday, I had the whole family with me and everyone was tired. As we passed I looked up to see that it had collapsed. One of the recent wind storms was too much for the old wood beams supporting the curved roof.

Disappointed that it had fallen but, I got to thinking that it had lasted longer than any other barns it’s age. I have to wonder why the builder chose that design. Why he mixed features others hadn’t. why when his design stood for decades longer than his contemporaries no one else copied his work.

Now rather than missing the barn, I can’t help but think how much I would have like to have met the man that built it.

i've been using my Canon EOS for a while now. at first i just had the cheap 18-55mm that they include with the body. then a friend(and better photographer than i will ever be) gave me his old 55-200mm lens. it's not the greatest piece of hardware, but it gave me options i didn't have before. it expanded the envelope of what i could do with my camera.

my problem was that the percentage of shots i could use compared to what i was taking was just way too low. i've been getting better, but all too often i get exactly what i wanted only to end up with a little blur hear or there.

i'll be the first to admit some of it was me. i need to spend more time learning the camera instead of falling back on the same modes that i'm comfortable with.

For my birthday [link] got me one of the greatest gifts(second only to the engineering drawings for a piper cub) ever.

a new, very nice 18-200mm Sigma.

now it's all up to me.

i'm working on it.

All through out history we’ve had great ideas that have changed our society for the better.
Although the really old ones like fire and the wheel were so far back that no one will be given proper credit, the great ideas from the last 4-500 years are all well documented.
The people who came up with them were proud of what they’ve come up with.

15th century

Leonardo De Vinci is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.

16th century

Nicolaus Copernicus was the first astronomer to formulate a scientifically-based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.

Johannes Kepler discovered that the paths planets follow are elliptical.

I could go on and on.
I guess my point is, was anyone ever proud of thinking up Daylight Savings Time?
How many people know who came up with it, let alone the real reason why?

I want to suggestsomething new.
I'll call it Mean Split Time.
Rather than switching our clocks forward and back every few months. lets move it forward 30 minutes and leave it there.
take the mean average and split the difference.