Salt Peanuts

Congrats, Nate!

Same here.

^ It's that whole adult/teachers/counselors touching kids thing, at least around here. If the kids can apply it themselves, it's usually fine, though some places still ask for written/signed notes from parents.

In the case of my friend's nephew (he has severe allergies to variety of items, including peanuts), the school initially resisted having EpiPens, then said it would be fine as long as they were kept in a double-locked cabinet behind the locked closet in the school nurse's office, which was located on a different floor. His parents, understandably, said fuck you, and kept fighting the school. It was eventually agreed that EpiPens would be kept in the classroom with his teacher (or on said teacher if out of classroom) and several school personnel were trained in EpiPen administration. Ari is spot on regarding sunblock - it is amazing the amount of crap that one needs to go through for sunblock in child care now-a-days.

^ This. I'm glad to hear Alden's okay. I hope his school doesn't give you trouble about having Epi pens in building like my friend's nephew's school.

You just have to do a decent amount of research on whether a project is achievable/realistic before you help fund it. A friend of mine is thus far 5 for 5 on Kickstarter/Indiegogo projects he's backed, but he's worked and headed numerous projects for companies that manufacture specialized items so he probably can guess which one has a decent chance of being successful.

While Photoshop utilizes GPU for better performance/features, Lightroom currently doesn't and its performance is based almost entirely on CPU and RAM. Also, it's bit old at this point, but should still apply since Adobe really hasn't changed the way Lightroom is built - Will an SSD Improve Adobe Lightroom Performance?

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/kickstartmart

Happy Birthday!

Sigma's sensors have poor high ISO performance.

What's your camera? I'm curious since I've yet to find anything camera related on Amazon trade-in program that I couldn't sell for significantly more on FM or even eBay. After reading several reviews/forum threads, I'd avoid it like a plague, though.

^ Woohoo!

Happy Birthday!

The much bigger sensor of Ricoh should give you better quality at equal ISO value. The faster lens of Sony will give you faster shutter speed at equal ISO, though you should be able to crank up the ISO on Ricoh to match the shutter speed while still maintaining advantage on IQ/noise, at least on paper.

While I've not used or handled either of them, maybe try out a Ricoh GR or Nikon Coolpix A, assuming 28mm focal length works for you. If I remember correctly, Ari has Ricoh so maybe he can chime in.

X100s?

Canon's APS-C lens lineup sucks (as does Nikon's DX lens lineup) and putting on full-frame lenses completely defeats the purpose of going small, IMO. That said, SL1 would make a nice light setup if you are paring it with small primes.

Fuji XT-1? I hate the mushy/small buttons on it, though. Also, base ISO of 200 can be a pain with fast glasses as the top shutter speed is 1/4000. I've been told flash implementation isn't that great. It used to be RAW conversion can be problematic with Fuji cameras - not sure how it is now. If you don't mind the difference in dof, m43 system is also nice. I've used E-M5 for a while and it is a really nice camera. The lens lineup is also pretty mature on m43. The IQ is quite nice but high ISO is still pretty noisy, though. Also, the menu system on Olympus is atrocious (I don't know about Panasonic). Is this going to supplement or replace your Nikon 7000/7100? As mch as I like what Sony has done with bodies of late, I don't like that they now have 4-5 different lens mount/lineups that they are not really supporting.

Well that looks painful. Last night, attempted to do a backyard (front yard, technically) camping with my daughter. She eventually decided it was too exciting to fall asleep and we went back inside. This morning, while getting stuff out of my tent we were using, I noticed that just about all the seam tapes/seals on the rain fly have failed or are failing - glad it did not rain last night. I'm not surprised considering its age, but not really not looking forward to sealing the seams again as I don't have large enough floor space to do it it all at once anymore.

Happy Birthday!

This is what I've done with my wife's and my in-laws computer as well.

Of course, now my MBP is back having more GPU issues.

Happy Birthday!

Nope, Lightroom can still be bought as a standalone product. While I still don't like the subscription model, $120/year for up-to-date Lightroom and PS isn't too bad, assuming you use PS.

What Brent said. Sorry to hear of your troubles, Knuckles. Mine (early 2011 MBP) has been having GPU issues on and off since February, but have stabilized a bit over the last couple of months. Probably helps that it just resides on my desk as a glorified desktop now (I've got a work MBP I can use as an actual laptop). Also, from what I've read on Apple forums, problems have been reoccurring even after it's been repaired (GPU/logic board replacement) by Apple, since it's not the GPU that's the problem, but the solder used/poor soldering job.