During our 2012 trip to Alaska, we added ice climbing to our trip – I couldn’t recommend it more!

Our ice wall was approximately a mile onto the Matanuska glacier. There we learned to use crampons, ice axes and the combination while climbing. Overall we spent six hours hiking, training and climbing.

Being a well-versed rock climber, I was excited to try ice climbing. I would compare the difficulty to an easier indoor climbing wall due to the infinite number of holds available (almost anywhere in the ice).

Everyone in the group had a wonderful time – even during our preliminary training with the excellent MICA guides. I highly recommend ice climbing when you have the chance.

More climbing photos are available on our Alaska photo gallery.

We enjoyed a warm, busy day at Brew Riot on Sunday, May 20 in downtown Oak Cliff. Equipped with three kegs, twenty-five 22 oz. bottles and two cases of 12 oz. bottles, the four of us were determined to give it all away.

Our five entries lasted the day and the swarm of thirsty rioters.

Find more about entries at the Necktie Brewery website.

• Atlantic Maple Brown
• Four-in-Hand Milk Stout
• Clip-on Cali IPA
• Collegiate Common
• Half-Windsor Porter

Timers are a great way to ensure you get in the zone, take breaks and check important things periodically. But who wants to fiddle with a mouse when the need for a timer arises?

That began my search for a desktop timer solution. The timer must be easily activated with keyboard controls, accept simple time inputs in a natural language and get out of the way as fast as possible.

This led me to a Launchy based shortcut for the Orzeszek Timer. Orzeszek Timer is an open-source timer that accepts various time inputs via command line arguments. So, giving it 10m as input would start a timer for 10 minutes just as you would expect.

Setup

1. Download and install Launchy.

2. Save the Orzeszek Timer to a known location.

3. Use Launchy’s built-in Runner plugin to create a custom command with the following options:

   Name: timer  
   Program: C:\Path\To\Orzeszek Timer.exe  
   Arguments: $$  

   

Start a Timer

Activate Launchy, type “timer”, hit TAB, and input your desired timer length. When your timer expires you’ll be notified.

Forget trying to rely on hope to remember your important meeting, just set a timer when you think of it and get there ahead of time.

A large moth found its way onto my porch yesterday. View the full size image to see the details of its wings.

I captured this dive in 5 shots over the course of about 1.5 seconds. That was the easy part. Blending the images took an additional 2 hours of fiddling in Hugin and Gimp.

Here is the result:

The shot features the finale of the pirate dive show from the 2009 Texas State Fair.

My trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was an excellent opportunity to do more camping photography.

The following images are interesting in that the first required a tripod, getting my shoes muddy and fending off bugs. While the second image was a quick snapshot during our train ride. I am pleased with both.

Two of my favorite photos from this past weekend’s festivities:

Surprisingly firework photography is easier than it seems. And since this was my first time shooting fireworks I followed the tips from How to Photograph Fireworks Displays.

My take from all the tips I read was to use a tripod, keep the shutter speed between 1-3 seconds and set the focus to infinity. After your camera is configured, shoot as many photos as possible.

A photo of a dragonfly from last November at the Trinity River Audubon Center.