My home-made NAS, part 2

I visited Canada Computers tonight. I came out empty handed. The cheapest power supply they have was $32. Should I have gotten it? It is cheap but I thought I'd salvage a power supply from another computer I have. So, we'll see. I might be able to get my NAS back in operation tomorrow. Tonight, I am tired. Eyes are droopy. Time to take a long nap until the first spec of light wakes me up.

My home-made NAS

My Network Attached Storage (NAS) machine is about three years old (?) and has seen better days. It's on a stretcher now. The other day, I wondered why my mail server was hung. I noticed later that an NFS mount point got frozen because the NAS went south.

It is probably no real news. I heard the fan. It was coughing and gasping for air a couple of weeks ago. Its legs were feeble and trembled at every rotation. I reached behind the machine yesterday and found that the fan is dead. Maybe the power supply is dead too now as I can no longer start up the computer. Completely black screen, no LED, no sign of life.

I have thousands of photos on this NAS.

I will shop for a new power supply this weekend.

Colour temperature

Here is something to play with -- the colour temperature setting. The original photo looked a little flat with a dull colour to it. I threw the photo in Irfanview and adjusted the colour temperature, turning it down until the water looks blueish. We're in the fall so the colours of the leaves should really be red and yellow now, but they are greenish in this rendition. I kinda like it this way. It looks like a late summer shot.

50mm f/1.8E

I once owned a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 and sold it to a student of arts. Well, after a friend showed how his camera was able to capture a billion more stars than my camera could on a camping trip to Cyprus Lake, I decided to get back one of those 50mm f/1.8!

I found on craigslist an old 50mm f/1.8E version. This is one of the original 50mm Nikkor made. I wanted it and knew how I would use it. During the day, my faithful 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 is still my primary lens but from time to time, when I need to shoot in the dark, the 50mm f/1.8 will be it.

So tonight, when I drove out to the Waterdown Falls, I made good with this 50mm lens.

I first shot with my expensive 18-200mm lens. The image came out too dark to work with. I could not make out anything in the image viewed on the LCD. Just not enough light.

I then remembered I brought the 50mm along. After swapping the lenses, I re-shot the pictures. I knew I could not get the same wide angle shots but at least, I would not have wasted the fuel and time driving out there.

Here was the result, colour-adjusted: