life – Page 7

How to take pictures of the moon with an iphone

**All three photos taken with an iphone.**

I got a great picture of May’s Flower Moon. It’s reddish, lit by the sun at night.

I took pics on Friday night, but they were not so clear, I was never able to get a clear picture of the moon in the past. But a friend posted a beautiful image she took the same night.

I said to her, “You always take such great moon pictures.” She said she took it with her iphone and she’ll show me how to do it.

Having no patience to wait for her to show me, I googled it and I found out how to take a picture of the moon with an iphone or any night shot for that matter. And on Saturday night, I got the image I was always trying to get. A beautiful moon image.

If you don’t have patience, like me, and don’t care about how to do it, just skip the rest of this below and just enjoy the pics here!

You need to use the 1x Wide lens or the 2x Telephoto lens if using the latest iphone. For some reason, the 0.5x lens doesn’t work for night images. There is a night vision icon (a moon) at the upper left when looking at the phone/camera. The icon usually pops on by itself, but if not, it will be white. Just tap it to put the night mode on.

I had seen that working the night before, it does a count down, holding the shutter open, but I didn’t know what it meant and I kept stopping it from doing it’s thing.

But that’s what you want – it will count down the seconds it needs to capture the night image – usually 3 to 5 seconds. Maybe more in a very dark space.

After that, you need to play with the editing feature on the phone. Edit the image to get rid of all the light and bring up the brightness of the image itself. Make the sky around it black.

Save it. And after saving it, you may see a halo around the moon. Open the image again, and darken it.

So you’re going to edit it twice – first time using everything you can to bring out the brightness and clarity. Second time, getting rid of the by darkening the background.

Hopefully that works for you.

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Vincent’s photos

I was wishing someone a happy birthday today on Facebook, and something new came up – past photos of that person with me, come up along with the birthday wish. This reminded me of my friend Vincent.

Years ago, when Vincent would send Christmas cards, he would include photos of you from the past year. I don’t know if he took the photos deliberately or not, but he would have photos of you at a Fourth of July picnic, or a birthday party or a trip we went on together or whatever.

Usually every December, when you opened your Christmas card from Vincent, out would drop two or three photos of yourself with others, including Vincent (0r not). It was usually some event you had forgotten about, nothing grand like a wedding but always a small event that faded from memory.

I was thinking of Vincent’s photos when the photos popped on on Facebook today, the Facebook photos aren’t current because I don’t take as many photos as I used to. I forget or feel awkward when we’re at a party or event or whatever, I think people may wonder, “What are you going to do with that picture?” But truth be told, everyone is taking pictures every minute of the day, so I wouldn’t be the only one. And 9 times out of 10, they say, “Send me a copy of that!”

Many times at events – with family and friends, I’m tempted to go around and get pics of people. Sometimes I’ll hand my phone to one of my cousins and say, “Go around and get pictures,” but they never do either.

One of my cousins is starstruck and he’s the first to get pics with some famous person or other, whether they want that or not. But I don’t have enough pics of family and friends. I’ve got to make an effort.

I don’t think I have anything from our family Christmas or Easter this past year when we all were together. There was a wedding a few months back, I don’t think I have many from that either.

I’ve got to make an effort to start getting pics of everything.

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Cloudy with a chance of faces

I started this thing called Cloudy With A Chance of Faces. It’s images I see in clouds.

I’ve been posting pictures over the years and a friend suggested I make a thing of it. I add a few outlines to show what I’m seeing and there it is.

I live in Miami, right on the Bay, that combination makes for interesting visions in the sky. The clouds here move very quickly, if you see a formation, you have to capture it quick or it’s gone.

Every morning when I wake up, I look outside and there is something staring me in the face. Many times the clouds look like mountains, other times Snoopy or a lady or whatever.

You could get addicted. I could literally stand in one place and get so many images in a short amount of time. Now that I’m doing this Cloudy project, it gets a big hard not to be obsessed and just be staring at the clouds all day long, waiting for the next image to appear. But oddly enough, when I’m deliberately looking, I don’t see anything. It seems to be an organic thing, you know, it just happens when you least expected, you look up and something is staring down at you.

A friend visiting from New York once said that our clouds have layers. I take that to mean they are very expressive. And they are.

If you’d like to follow my venture, I have set up two social media sites. I have the website CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces.com, too, but I haven’t done anything with that yet. I just wanted to get the name while it was available.

Here is the Instagram account: instagram.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces
and Facebook: facebook.com/CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces
Also Tumblr: tumblr.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces

Hope to see you there!

Madonna, Marilyn Monroe or Mae West? You choose!

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Off the grid

I’ve been living in the stone age this week. What happened is, my internet and tv went dead. ATT Unverse just stopped working. It was an area thing, not just me. The frustrating part was that ATT wouldn’t tell us anything – just that the service would be back soon, which it wasn’t.

It is now almost 60 hours and we’re still off the grid. But I finally found out what it is – one of my neighbors told me it’s a problem with a junction box. And that 60 hours may turn into 100 hours without service according to ATT, who my neighbor got through to.

The good part is I called ATT and instead of canceling their service, like I always promise to do, I am giving them more money in the form of a hotspot on my iphone, which now allows me to have internet. So I am able to post this, post my cartoons and do some work.

It all went dead Monday night at 9:30 pm, right in the middle of Summer House, which I was watching. And I didn’t realize how bad things are when we don’t have internet and tv. Mostly, I couldn’t work, not even cartooning because I go back and forth between computers.

It’s happened before for long periods – after hurricanes mostly, but we’re too consumed with that mess to worry about internet and tv. But the last time, we did have electricity, no wifi or tv, but my neighbor who has Comcast/Xfinity, gave me his password and since they were up and running, I didn’t have to rely on ATT, I used his password to go online and work.

At night during that time, instead of being able to watch tv, I watched two Harold Lloyd movies on YouTube on my phone. So I made do. Oddly enough, without wifi and tv, you sort of feel as if you are Harold Lloyd hanging by a thread, off of a clock.

But for some reason, Monday, into Tuesday this week felt strange. It’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t rely on the internet, I mean, whether you use cable tv or streaming services, you need to get online these days for that.

My brother was telling me about YouTube tv, he has that. I was looking at how it worked at his house the other day. It’s much cheaper than cable and it gets all the channels. So I was considering changing to that. Again, it would relay on wifi to work, but you could use it on your phone or tablet, etc. so you could use that bandwith to make do.

After 24 hours of this mess, I was over my withdrawal symptoms, I felt at peace. I didn’t miss tv or the internet. I felt like it was in the “old days” when I was hardly ever home and basically in and out to change my clothes.

I think I started being a homebody during the pandemic, and never stopped being in that habit. But now I know I can live without being addicted to wifi and tv. I enjoy depriving myself (doesn’t Kramer say that on Seinfeld in one episode? I think it was about him not having a refrigerator).

First world problems.

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Right place at the right time

Today’s cartoon is about a peacock, or rather a peacock feather. When I looked at my personal Facebook page today, it featured a memory from two years ago – peacocks crossing the street. I don’t know how to show that here, but that isn’t the point, the point is that a sign like that means I am in the right place at the right time. According to my friend jak anyway.

jak always said that if you read a word and hear a word at the same time, that’s a sign that you are in the right place at the right time and coincidences like that always mean the same thing.

Where I live, we have peacocks all over the place. Some people love them, others hate them. I love them. But a few years back there was an issue that got in the news about people wanting to get rid of the peacocks. They would round them up and send them to a farm somewhere, which makes no sense, since they will never get them all, they are always proliferating.

NPR called me up to interview me on the radio about the birds. I talked to them about 15 or 20 minutes and I told them that I loved them and that they were part of the character of the neighborhood. I did say I could understand how people despised them because they were dirty, loud and they pecked at their reflection in cars in people’s driveways, which ruined the paint job.

The interview ran on the radio and it was picked up by newspapers all over the country. But what the newspapers did was pick up my comment about them being dirty, loud and a nuisance. They didn’t pick up the part where I said they should be left alone because they are loved by most of us and they are part of the village and village life!

One newspaper wrote a story and as is the case, newspapers all over the country picked this piece of news up. My uncle read my quote in the NY Post of all places! They ran my quote about them being loud.

I was in the Chicago Tribune and Michigan newspapers, Los Angeles, the Midwest, all over – I was branded a peacock hater, which was the total opposite! They all chose to run the negative comments, which really weren’t negative, they were just facts about the peacocks. I’ve always defended the peacocks, but that part they ignored.

It was a bit funny, except the people in the village where I live were not pleased with me. Since the original interview was on the radio, I didn’t have anything in writing to defend myself. But I was part of our peacock mascot project some years back where people painted and designed about 50 of those cement art pieces that you’ve probably seen in different incarnations and animals around the country (cows, dogs, cats, etc.). And I used the peacock as my business logo for years. So I am a peacock fan.

Anyway, I guess I’m in the right place at the right time today since the cartoon and one of the peacock memories popped up on Facebook today. Right?

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Bare minimum Mondays

Have you heard about “Bare Minimum Mondays?” They’re sort of a sister to Quiet Quitting and Casual Friday.

I work for myself, so I can admit I’ve sort of lived Bare Minimum Mondays for years. As the lady in this Insider article, she does Bare Minimum Mondays, to beat the Sunday Scaries, which I get.

That was my solution to hating Mondays – I would do little work and go to the beach. I would make it a habit to go to the beach every Monday. It eased me into the week. Again, I work for myself, so that’s an easy thing to do.

I used to be the president of the board at our condo. Back then I really needed Bare Minimum Mondays. I told someone once that every Sunday night felt like the night before the first day of school each Monday because it was it was a lot of pressure and not enjoyable, not to mention stressful. He laughed at that until he became the condo prez, then he got it.

For many years I printed school newspapers and other publications and during the summer months – June, July and August, I didn’t have any money coming in, so on the first day of school, which wasn’t a Monday, but usually a Wednesday, I would celebrate business starting back up by going to the beach. It was sort of like Bare Minimum Monday, but it was better. Since everyone was dealing with the first day of school – parents and kids – I had that day to myself.

But then again, during the school and business year, I would manage to take Bare Minimum Mondays, to ease my way into the week. It was a mini-vacation.

When there is a holiday on a Monday, it is sort of like Bare Minimum Monday for everyone. For some reason, the week goes so much faster – it’s Tuesday before you know it, then it’s Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – it goes by so fast. That sounds like that Seinfeld episode (shown below), but it’s true.

So anyway, I think Bare Minimum Mondays or any day you choose during the week, is a great thing for your sanity. It’s a day you can look forward to. I know there is lots of talk these days about a four day work, but even then I think we need a Bare Minimum day to ease the work week, no matter how many days it is.

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All you gotta do is answer the phone

Years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I asked a neighbor how she worked in New Hampshire and Miami – she and her husband, both lawyers, went back and forth between the two places. She told me, “Tom, all you have to do is answer the phone, the client/customer doesn’t have to know where you are, they are just happy that you answered the phone.” And I’ve always remembered that.

It’s so easy these days with all the digital things we have – iphones, ipads, etc. I’ve worked on planes, trains and at the beach.

Years ago, I think I mentioned, I was a printing broker and I handled school newspapers. I literally worked an hour or two a day. I picked up the newspaper ready for print at the schools and dropped them off at the printer and that was it. In between, I stopped at the office, but by 10 am, I was usually free the rest of the day. And this was before cell phones.

I was unreachable after 10 am. I don’t know how I managed to do this for 20 years, but I ran a very good business like this. Teachers occasionally would leave me voice messages on my home answering machine, but basically, that was it. I was free from 10 am until 8 am the next day. No fuss, no muss.

When cell phones came into play and websites and things like that, I seemed to be more tied to the office than when I was a printing brokers with no way of reaching me.

It’s always amazing to think and wonder how things got done in the past without being tied to our cell things 24/7.

I blogged about this one time – the fact that I would meet up with friends while traveling and we would just meet up at the appointed time and place without being able to text back and forth 100 times to arrange it all. I would tell friends I would be in NY on such and such date and if they happened to be there visiting, too, we would arrange to meet.

But how did we do it? I don’t remember. Did we say on such and such date at such and such time we would meet in front of this place and that was it? We always managed to meet up and we were always there at the appointed date and time.

Sometimes life was much easier and less stressful when we weren’t tied to wifi all day and night.

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There’s no personal service anymore

There’s a lot of talk about AI (artificial intelligence) and things like that lately. And it all seems interesting. I’ve always been pro-technology. I build websites, I draw digitally, rather than with pen and paper, for 15 years I published our local news online, and I’ve run an online business for years, so I’m all up for that, but lately, a couple of things have bothered me.

I had a doctor’s appointment recently and it was all done digitally, except for the doctor’s appointment, which now that I think about it, could have been through Zoom. But what I mean is I had to make the appointment online, then they texted me things and emailed me forms. I had to fill out forms online before showing up for the appointment, then I had to fill in insurance forms online and and answer questions, personal things, including what religion I am.

Then weeks before the appointment, they either emailed me, texted me or called me daily. And I mean one of those three options daily! When I have a doctor’s appointment, I like to not think about it until the day of the appointment, not be reminded about it every day until the day of the appointment.

When I showed up for the appointment, I had to check in myself on a computer. And then a wrist band came out of the machine which I had to wear, you know the type you would get if you were in a hospital? And it was all mechanized and I felt like a number from there on.

The other day I saw a condo online that I am interested in. It’s in a building I lived in some years back. I rented back then and now I have the opportunity to purchase. I love the area and love the building and I decided to make an appointment to see the unit, I think it’s to mostly get it out of my system, rather than possibly buy it, but who knows. I have a friend who is my realtor, but since I don’t want to waste his time, I thought meeting with the listing agent for the first time would be best.

But I can’t get a live listing agent on the phone, so . . . .