Category: Travel

Leena and Gregs Wedding

If you have been following my twitter feed you would know i was at an Indian Wedding this weekend in Albany NY. Below are a couple of the shots that caught my eye when doing a first scan of the photos.

This is the first real test of my new DSLR and I learned a few things about the capabilities. I wasn’t very happy with the built in flash, I really need to upgrade to an SB 800, in large rooms it would over expose the foreground and you would get bright spots on reflective surfaces. For a lot of the flash shots I dropped the flash exposure down a little to compensate. For the non flash shots I was shooting at 1600 iso which has its draw backs, images are a little softer and I still ended up with a number of shots with slow exposure so they have blurry hand movements. Shooting without the flash meant that the photos have an orange glow from the indoor lighting which I actually I liked for the wedding since i gives a warm feel to the photos. I need to work on getting my usable shot count up higher, i am still wasting some shots because the shutter speed is too slow.

Loose lithium batteries can nolonger be checked

This is a new one on me, According to the Washington Post you can no longer pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage.

To help reduce the risk of fires, air travelers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage beginning Jan. 1, the Transportation Department said Friday.

If packed in plastic bags, batteries may be in carryon baggage. The limit is two batteries per passenger.

Mmm so does this mean I am allowed to check a lithium if it is still in its original packaging?

The more they make it more difficult to fly the more I wish the US had a reasonable train system or god forbid actually wanting to drive instead.

High speed rail links

I am a huge fan of anything other than car travel and now to a large extent air travel. I bike, take the bus, take the train, if possible rather than taking the car. The Washington Post is running a story on the need for high speed rail links. What I am surprised they didn’t mention is the need for a high speed rail link between Baltimore and DC. The Marc does an acceptable job but doesn’t run on the weekend which hurts people who want to live in one city but work in the other. If you want a similar project to compare the possibilities of a DC to Baltimore line just look at the Glasgow Edinburgh line in Scotland. It runs every 15 minutes at peak time and is fast and used by a large number of people.

China in the news

Maybe it is that I am trying to learn Mandarin, or maybe it is that I am married to someone who was born in China but it seems like China is in the news alot this week.

You might have read about the obvious stuff like tainted food or polution problems in china. Then something comes along and just makes you go waoh. Reuters is reporting that nearly half of the pregnant teens in China’s financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the Internet. That just makes me wonder, computers are that common in china that teens are using them for dating, then I think surely they if they find a mate online they can lookup how babies and made and how not to get pregnant.