USA celebrates another birthday amidst challenging times. The great thing about this country is that when things get really ugly, the people find the will and resolve to pull together and change things for the better.
Here's to the US of A!
We did watch fireworks, from a local middle school playground. It was definitely not as good as last years, but we were happy that there was any fireworks at all.
If things go the way they should, next years fireworks should be blast!
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Or should we say "belated" happy 4th, since it is already past midnight!
This year, the 4th of July was celebrated at "Roaring Camp" which included a nice train ride through redwood forests.
This was followed by some activities for kids (you can see Jr. and the little one trying to do some Hula Hoops in the video.. note the little one trying a hoop with a diameter larger than her height).
Then daddy took the kids to watch Fireworks with K. while the ladies went to watch the latest Hindi Movie with ARR songs, which for some reason is sold out, playing in the local english movie theaters as well!
All said and done, a fine day.. but.. but.. but..
Daddy made the mistake of formating his CF card just before the fireworks, forgeting the fact that he never downloaded the roaring camp photos from the camera! All may not be lost as there are apparently some software out there that can retreive the formated photos, provided we buy a card reader that can show up as an external drive on the laptop!
We have our fingers crossed..
In other news, Bush and Bush Sr. of the house have mandated that daddy edit them out of the video for this blog post!
That was not easy.
1. The guide told us so many interesting things on the train and I wanted to have all that in the video.
2. The ladies planted themselves right between me, the kids and the driver and made it next to impossible to get them out of the frame!
3. I could have been that dude from the next coach taking a video of the whole thing with GWB and GWBS who is possibly posting it on youtube right now with them in the frame!
It is high time the democrats in this house came to power!
Seriously, learnt so many new things today..
a. Switchbacks and how they work
b. redwood tree seeds lay dormant for upto nine hundred years.
c. The seeds germinate only after a forest fire. A forest fire is almost a must to get the next generation of seeds to sprout. Had no idea! For some strange reason this got memories of Gavaskar and Tendulkar .. on a freaking narrow gage train up a mountain!
d. I still love cricket, somewhere in the back of my head!
e. Most of the trees we saw today were 300+ feet tall and were >1000 years old!
f. Butterflys love a steam bath or at least excess moisture. From out of nowhere a bunch of butterflies came to enjoy the steam puffs from the engine.
and much much more, like how to switch from standard to night vision in my camcorder, how to possibly retrieve images from a formatted CF card, etc. etc.
A day well spent. Here is the video....
Next years July 4th will be interesting.
A different president!
A different US of A!
A different world?
A more powerful daddy?
Only time will tell!
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A great camera.. but a photographer not well acquainted with the greatness..
Need to play with the camera some more I guess!
Here are a few shots from tonights fireworks. I thought if I used the manual mode and went all the way to F25 or F32! and kept the exposure at anywhere from 2 to 4 seconds (with the ISO still at 100), there should be crisp lines tracing every little dot of light streaking across the sky.
I believe the results are exactly that! But this looks too artificial! Next time, I go down to F8 or F11 and do the same thing. Well, there is always New year fireworks.
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Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.