I am back home after a great, but rather wet, trip to the Philippines. It rained almost every day. But, the time with my in-laws was wonderful and the time spent with my wife and daughter even more so. As you know from the previous post, I purposefully left my DSLRs at home and only took my new Fuji X100. I figured, if I forced myself to be reliant on it for the week that I was gone I would get to know it better. I think that happened. Plus on the last day, I found Fuji released a Firmware update. I can’t tell you how good the firmware update was, as I didn’t know the camera well enough to make a comparison. I do notice an extra focus box in the middle of the screen that was not there prior to the release. Not sure yet what that is all about. As I said, I found the release on my last day, so I haven’t even had time to play with it as yet.

Once back, I had to put my nose to the proverbial grindstone and produce a presentation to accompany the class I am teaching in Cambodia. I will be teaching Soundslides Pro to the participants. I used my images that I am collecting from the X100 for the show. This will give a clear example of what the X100 can do. Each image has the EXIF data in the caption, You can click the caption button for viewing it, for those that want to geek out. (Better to do that in the full screen option.) Again, as in the previous post, I did all the post processing in Lightroom as I would with any other of my photography. So, no, this is not what it looked like coming out of the camera. I hope you enjoy.

Here is an html version for the iPad and iPhone users.

Night shot at Straights Quay, Penang, Malaysia. Shot with the Fuji FinePix X100

This week I am taking some personal time and going to the Philippines to visit my family. Actually, I have not visited my in-laws in a few years. It is always a great time of eating, driving and more eating.  Eating, as I swear it is the Filipino national pastime and driving, in that the family is spread out all over Luzon. Plus, it is time to give my nieces some new Facebook profile pictures, so it is a must that I travel with a camera. I think they will be surprised, maybe even disappointed to see me arrive with the small  X100. I am not too concerned. After playing with it for the past day or two I feel certain we can get them a photo they will like.

Mini-rant: As I write this, I am sitting here in at the Penang airport waiting for my flight. It was delayed for over 4 hours. I really have mixed feelings flying Air Asia. Yes, they are cheap. But one of the most inefficient airlines I have every traveled on. If this was a paying job there is no way I would have flown these guys.  Not dependable and quite frankly not very service oriented.

I’ll try to post when I can. But don’t expect too much.

Kopi Susu

It’s Friday and it’s been a long week. I don’t think you know, but my wife has been gone for two weeks to the Philippines. She is arriving back tonight. I’ve been playing Mr. mom, and doing a pretty sorry job at it.  I’ve managed to grill the worst steak ever, make the most pasty mashed potatoes of all time and absolutely ruined some linguine pasta. Did you know you are supposed to stir pasta? Who knew?  It will be great to have Alou home again, if for no other reason, for Jessie’s health.

On the blog it’s been a busy week. On Monday,  I was able to release to the world my PhotopShelter galleries. On Tuesday, I posted a multimedia slide show on The Last Songkok (prayer cap) Maker in Penang and then on Wednesday we had a lively discussion about critiquing images and whether to do that with a real world perspective or a perfect world perspective. Then, yesterday a post on conflict in images. So all-in-all it’s been a very busy week around here. Off the radar I’ve been working on several aspects of my social network. I managed to make live my Digital Trekker fan page on Facebook ,as well as add a nifty social software bar at the bottom of the site by Wibiya. Speaking of which, take a few minutes and play with the bar at the bottom of the page. The bar gives readers many different options to share this site and the information on it with others as well as options for drilling deeper into thedigitaltrekker.com.

I discovered a new analytics application called Woopra. it gives real-time information in a very user-friendly environment.  One cool thing about Woopra is I can tag visitor to my site with names and then pop up a browser screen on their screen that lets me chat with them while they’re on the site. It’s crazy, I’m not sure how I’d use it. Though I do think I scared David duChemin to death the other day when he was visiting my site. That alone was worth it.

Yesterday, at around four in the afternoon my Internet provider went down. Actually, my whole phone system went down. I’m now checking e-mail, and posting to this blog by using my iPhone tethered to my computer. I’m amazed at the speed and the bandwidth provides.

One quick FYI before I close this post. Next week I’ll be giving away a license to Soundslides Plus to some lucky reader. So be sure to check back in and be a part of this contest.

Now go out and have a nice relaxing weekend with someone you love. That’s what I am gonna do.