Amber and I took a little trip to Morehead, NC to do some Atlantic wreck diving with Olympus Dive Center. It was time to try out Amber's new housing for real. We also took the Coolpix 5400 and its housing, so we could both be photogs. The shots came out pretty well.

More pics on our Flickr pages.

The new version is out. It adds SparklePlus support, which will let you auto-update (at intervals, or manually), and if you choose, you can share back some anonymous profiling information (processor type, OS version, &c) so I can better know my user base. There is absolutely no personal information sent back (other than what I already know: you've got enough taste to use a Mac).

Also, I've finally got my post-processing script support finished. You can script the batch any way you like. Thumbscrew finishes a batch by calling the selected script directly, with one argument, the path to the batch file:

/path/to/script_file /path/to/batch_file

All the scripts live in ~/Application Support/Thumbscrew/Scripts, and all the batches live in ~/Application Support/Thumbscrew/Batches. Thumbscrew ships with a sample script, save_to_desktop.py, that copies the batch file from the batches folder to the Desktop:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
import os.path

batch_file_path = sys.argv[-1]

desktop_file_path = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser(u'~/Desktop'),
                                 os.path.split(batch_file_path)[-1])

inp = open(batch_file_path)
contents = inp.read()
inp.close()

outp = open(desktop_file_path, 'w')
outp.write(contents)
outp.close()

Since the script is called directly, the only thing to watch out for is that its executable bit is turned on. The batch file is an XML document with information about the batch:

<thumbscrew_batch name="20070605223040">
  <image name="Untitled14">
    <version name="original" path="/Users/zbir/Pictures/Thumbscrew/Untitled14.png"/>
    <version name="thumbnail" path="/Users/zbir/Sites/images/thumbnails/Untitled14_thumbnail.png"/>
    <version name="resized" path="/Users/zbir/Sites/images/photos/Untitled14_resized.png"/>
  </image>
</thumbscrew_batch>

Also, when images are pasted into Thumbscrew, it gives the pasted image a name, and stores it in ~/Pictures/Thumbscrew, so if you're making thumbnails or resized originals that should be living where the original does, it won't be relegated to an unfriendly /tmp directory.

Last, but not least, I've changed the icons a little, from our recent trip to Borneo. The application icon is being worked on, as well, and will show up in a later release.

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I got Amber an Ikelite housing for our D200 for her birthday. We plan on taking a lot more and better photos on our dive vacations. We waited until our insurance policy was accepted before taking the plunge to test it.

I think I somehow managed to still end up with schmutz on the sensor, as the blobs visible in these shots are also visible with another lens. Good thing I got a kit with multiple swabs and Eclipse.

This weekend, Amber and I decided to bike the 30 miles or so to Pocahontas State Park and camp overnight. We planned on making extensive use of their pool facility, though events conspired against us.

We managed to get everything we wanted onto both bikes, without requiring additional backpacks or trailers. Tent, two fleece sleeping bags, change of clothes, toiletries, food, and water. I brought my Garmin eTrex Vista Cx to give us the directions I snarfed using gmap-pedometer and GMapToGPX, loaded onto the eTrex via LoadMyTracks.

I tried to choose a route that would keep us to less-used byways, but I obviously don't know Richmond half as well as I thought I did. River Road (becoming Hugeonot Road) is a major road, heavily trafficked, and with extremely narrow shoulders. Amber was anxious at several points, and we ended up walking the bikes a good deal along this leg.

Bufort and Providence Roads were a bit more bucolic, though still with narrow shoulders.

It wasn't until we came upon Courthouse Road that things got very comfortable. Wide bike lanes almost the entire way to Pocahontas. We ended up deviating from our planned route which would have us skirt the entire eastern side of the park, to come to the entrance along Beach Road on the south, and instead came down an access fire road that fed directly into the park's trails, bringing us out into the main park area by the pool. We still had to bike a few miles to the camp office to check in and find a site, but a few extra miles on forest path beats a few extra miles on paved road, any day.

While we were there, the Richmond Symphony Orchestra were performing a free concert at the Heritage Amphitheater in the park. Once we got the camp set up (remarkably simple as light as we'd packed), we walked down some trails to get to the concert, taking the camera and a light dinner with us.

We got back to camp around 9 o'clock and were preparing for a decent snooze. Not to be had. In efforts to pare down, we chose not to bring camp mats or a thicker sleeping bag. The provided tent pads at the site were shallow beds of pea gravel, convenient for making a smooth place to pitch the tent, but not so convenient for sleeping on. Ow. Furthermore, while it was nearly impossible to sleep with the ruckus of families nearby, once the rain started, the white noise put us right to sleep. The next morning, it showed no signs of letting up.

While discretion might be the better part of valor, a cell phone is the better part of being stranded 30 miles from home in the rain. We waited until a respectable hour, and called our neighbor David to come fetch us in the Pathfinder. A humble end to a new experience, but one I'd do again.