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Ovation TV has a show running called Art Race which follows two competing Artists traveling coast to coast with no wallet or support system. They live by their wits and their Art is traded as their currency. Meals, lodging and travel… paid for with Watercolor or Oils. If it were only that simple. It’s on again tonight — check it out… We seem to have a favorite in Kenny here — sorry Ben. Good luck to both Artists. And oh my gosh — So refreshing to see something beyond Bob Ross reruns and Donna Dewberry’s One Stroke Painting. Yes indeed Ovation is giving me an Art fix…

Had my fill of medical diagnostics this past week and need to go do something different. It is slightly more bearable than last week — temper­ature — humidity wise outside and that will help a lot. I scribbled the cow below earlier this week. I hope to go see some more farms and countryside today. Been reading and getting inspired. I think that the Grange Fair will be happening here soon. Yep — Angorra Bunnies to Belgian Work Horses whose shoulders are taller than I am.

We aren’t likely to see storms till sometime Sunday. We had some nice ones last week and fortu­nately the blackout associated with the heat did not last too long. Hope that everyone is using the new Weather dot com apps that the site is sharing. I appre­ciate the data link that they provide down the right margin of this blog. I think that I can hear my wife starting to wake up. I came down at 4:00 AM and did the dishes and made the coffee — so I’ve been pretty quiet. Darn email is down as my provider had a “hardware emergency”. Maybe it will be back sometime today? Been gone since yesterday afternoon when I got back from my testing.

This video is directly from YouTube. Sure it’s been around for a while but… is it a concern that during those years in the White House… Oh jeez — I meant to hit that other button. Other versions of this exist on YouTube and a simple search can locate them.

This is what I do to rest my eyes when I take a break from painting. I hope to finish my painting this weekend and maybe go somewhere that we can draw on the spot or paint. I think that I should have number of them going at once. 

I suppose I ought to get back to my Watercolor image now. Wash is dry.

It has been so hot here that the prospect of Plein Air painting is somewhat repulsive. Perhaps a drawing done on the spot with color notes and lots of photo reference is the way to go.  Right now I’m setting up at the drawing board next to the computers. The Weather Alert radio upstairs just turned itself on automat­i­cally with some warning or advisory. It was in a cabinet in the dining room staying quiet. I’d just taken it back out again. I know now that we have another day of excessive heat expected here on Saturday. Oh joy.

I’m surrounding myself with these OTT Light bulbs. They give you brilliant illumi­nation but they are CFLs and will save a lot over a period of time and they are daylight balanced. You can find a nice display of OTT lighting at any JoAnn Fabric Store and I’ve even seen them at Michaels Arts and Crafts. They are also available here online and have a nice variety of shapes and forms that they come in to suit people’s different needs.

Color-wise they are much more effective than the old Luxo Lamps that I was used to working with. They relied on a round fluorescent tube and in the center was a spot for the incan­descent bulb. While this gave you more balanced lighting than fluorescent or incan­descent bulbs alone… it still did not come close to daylight. These OTT bulbs seem to make a big difference. You ought to check them out. These bulbs do reduce eyestrain quite a bit.  I’ve got to get on into painting here now.  so … I’ll keep writing  …more later

Another year passes and the Fourth of July remains symbolic.

Greetings to all from Holland, Pennsylvania as another July 4^th marks the anniversary of freedom from British rule. I’ve been diluting the water­color pigments and marking the cotton paper. Been looking around Bucks County for a good old fashioned Chicken Coop.

Sue found me one out Newtown-Richboro Road at Solly Brothers. Trouble is that it is hard to gather reference through the chicken wire that these rascals are behind. Spot metering and focusing is difficult when the virtual layer exists and the infrared system sees that instead of the intended target. But I will locate some more acces­sible Chickens around here. I’ve seen them on the road down to the Buxmont Veterinary Hospital… I’ll keep looking. I’d like to draw some Roosters.

My personal calendar turns over on Sunday as I reach the 53 year mark. What can I tell you? Beats the alter­native I suppose. I sure don’t like the images that I’ve seen of me lately. I suppose that it’s a good thing that I’m usually behind the camera. Speaking of behind the camera… I see my childhood friend Rob Vaughn is the anchor on the Lehigh Valley’s Channel 69 10:00 PM News carried on WFMZ. I’d seen Rob on a special report or two in the past when they picked up their stories on another channel. I was very glad to see that he’s doing well. His Dad — Bob Vaughn’s voice still echoes in my memory “WCBS news time is… ” Seems like I always had WCBS on in the car when I drove… especially at night. While growing up Rob and I used to use telescopes to practice the primitive art of Astronomy. My synapses do barf up old info from time to time. Rob had a Tasco telescope and I had a Monolux Refractor. I still remember Rob’s mom Ruby, brother Michael and sister Pam. It was just real good to see Rob on television here. Good work Rob.

I hope that everyone has a great Fourth of July Holiday -
please leave the fireworks to the pros…

I hope that all you Mothers had a wonderful day

Sue and I went looking for some more raw materials for her new creative outlet on Mother’s Day afternoon. Sue is getting involved with making jewelry and has had a couple of very successful pieces as she learns the ins and outs of putting gems, beads and metals together. They are really looking nice. Got some nice images of a couple of them on Saturday morning and I’ll put a couple of small shots below. I’ll put up a gallery of images soon. Turquoise photographs extremely well and the lighting looks good.

We stopped in at Tanners and a friendly herd of Dairy Cows came by to look at the funny looking people on the other side of the fence. These are big soulful animals and I can see that they are pausing and having their thoughts about all of it as we stand there. I’d last visited with a herd of Black Angus Cattle that were on the other side of the fence.

I have hundreds of new reference shots (thanks to John at DigiTech) of the Black and White “Gateway” Cows and hope to do some drawings of them soon. Looks like it will rain tomorrow afternoon.

WPaudio WordPress Player has been put to use here — hear?

In my article “About “ionos­phere” and Bill Beauchamp” I gave my background and explained why the name ionos­phere is being used for my website and now my blog. I’d recorded some HF Radio stuff while living in my apartment prior to getting married and moving here to Pennsylvania. I’d saved digital .wav files and just converted them so that they could be used on my site. With the exception of a missing on-screen volume control, I’m very happy with the addition. You’ll find the audio files at the bottom of the page linked above.

If you have a WordPress blog I think that you’d also find Todd Iceton’s program very useful. The current WPaudio WordPress MP3 Player version is 2.2.0 and can be downloaded by following the link provided or found at WordPress.org’s website.

I put a couple players on the other page and I’ll drop another one here. This was recorded (captured) using the Japan Radio NRD-545 DSP Shortwave Receiver and saving directly to the hard drive.

Last Wednesday evening my Olympus Camera was returned to me from DigiTech Camera Repair in Monrovia, California. This digital camera had been down for a long time but I had it under a stack of papers next to the drawing board here in the basement. I’d taken good care of it and had picked it up maybe a month and a half ago thinking that it was a pity that it didn’t work as it was in excellent condition physi­cally. It had performed well through it’s warranty period and even through an extended 3 year warranty with Mack Camera. I just couldn’t bring myself to tossing it in the trash. Have you seen that show called “Hoarders” on the Discovery Channel? I’m not quite that bad but I guess I do possess some of those traits…

It was during our trip to Cape May that the camera that I’d bought as a replacement to my original clicked to a sudden halt with a broken shutter. (same type) because I’d purchased all the acces­sories initially. The camera had been purchased to allow me to continue shooting for my graphic design work and illus­tration after the first Olympus E-20N stopped working abruptly with the addition of a couple 2 gigabyte Compact Flash Cards. It just stopped cold. Until I got the info from DigiTech I had no idea why…

I should preface this by saying that multiple attempts were made to get the Olympus fixed by the people who made it. No dice. Not even an answer.

Suddenly dead in the water and knowing that the older rather beat up Olympus wasn’t worth repairing… I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. I certainly am not in a position where I can go out and choose the camera of my dreams right now… and I was pretty much out of luck. I looked over Olympus’ site again and see them clearly state that they no longer support the camera. So I started looking online. Remembering that this used replacement was also found online — I hesitantly searched for someone that might be able to look at my camera. I didn’t really have much hope of it actually being repaired — but I wondered. The cost of a new digital SLR is out of reach right now and with family events approaching — I needed a solution. Google Search was my answer.

One shop was apolo­getic saying that Olympus doesn’t have any info available on the camera any longer and they couldn’t even get parts. Some didn’t answer my query at all. DigiTech Camera Repair got back to me quickly with a more than fair price, so off it went for service. The used camera must have had something very inter­esting happen to it. It has a fine chalky material in all of it’s seams and believe it or not — even inside the lens. I’m not really sure how someone goes about ripping the rubber grip off the camera body? — They did here. Let it suffice to say that I’m glad I wasn’t there. Lens shown below.

When I saw an email titled “Olympus E-20N” from DigiTech I winced a little. Expecting the worst, I opened it and was pleas­antly surprised…

John had dropped me a note to let me know that my camera was ready. Not only was it ready but he had done the work more quickly than I’d expected. Most impor­tantly John held to his estimate. Exactly. So with his work, John let me have a camera to use again and in the process converted a couple of pounds of scrap metal into a contributing member of society. I immedi­ately set about testing using my family as subjects and those shots are shown below and above.

The problem with the camera was that the electrical circuitry was shot. John repaired that and then noticed that the camera couldn’t recognize a memory card. So it seems as if the memory cards that I intro­duced were the downfall of the camera. They shorted out the card writing circuitry and in turn the main circuit as well. I use one of those big honker Lithium Polymer LIPO batteries that sits where a power drive film advancement system would have been on a tradi­tional film camera. So I don’t have tons of megapixels to spare but I’ll get my shot and it will work fine for me without running out of memory or battery power. I appre­ciate John’s work and there are links to DigiTech in this article and in the side widget area. My images follow.  There you go… a happy ending for a change.

Good to go… Thanks John !!!

Got an excellent bit of news by email on Saturday afternoon

My digital camera that died/fried several years back is coming home.  It went to California and a week later here it comes. Very reasonable price and a fast turnaround. The power circuit and the card writing circuitry were blown. The fellow who did the work was in Monrovia, California and I’d guess that I’ll have the camera back later this week. I’m surely thrilled by this turn of events and I’ll post links to the guy’s business as soon as I have the device in my hands and see it working again for myself.  I didn’t think that it was going to be good news when I saw that note — but I was very pleas­antly surprised.

I’ll let you know how it goes and graph­i­cally demon­strate the results. Been without an SLR since Cape May and I miss it. Which also reminds me that I should post a gallery of Cape May Victorians so that the “replacement” camera can have death with dignity.

I am a subscriber to a Desktop Publishing Newsletter at About​.Com that is written by Jacci Howard Bear. Today’s article discussed a recent article by Smashing Magazine about Instant Gratification literally killing Good Design. That shouldn’t be a big surprise.

While I don’t think that anything will change, there are some inter­esting thoughts for us graphics people and it was worth going to the link at Smashing Magazine. I’d also suggest that the Desktop Publishing Newsletter has some very solid ideas — so sign up. 

If you have time that is…