Phone Call Database 2008-06-05

I just came across a great new resource on the web for when you receive unsolicited phone calls. You can find them at WhoCallsMe.com

They have a very easy to use website with a brief explanation of the service:

Recent Phone Call Reports

This is a user supplied database of phone numbers of telemarketers, non-profit organizations, charities, political surveyors, SCAM artists, and other companies that don't leave messages, disconnect once you answer, ignore the Do-Not-Call List regulations, and simply interrupt your day.

If you received a strange call, most likely you are not the only one. Search for this phone number to see the reports of others. If there are no reports yet, leave your comment to start a conversation.

I can really see this site being useful when I receive calls whether I am interested in the services or not, I can always look up the business first to see how reputable they have been in the past.

Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :) (more...)

Cleveland Wedding: Harkness Chapel & The Cleveland Botanical Gardens 2008-06-08

We had a wonderful day photographing Sarah & Caleb's wedding. The ceremony was on the campus of Case Western Reserve University at Harkness Chapel and the reception was held at the Cleveland Botanical Garden.














All Photographs © 2008 John C. Kieger / www.SussexStudio.com

Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :) (more...)

Trayless Raid Drives anyone? 2008-07-28

Today I installed a new (RTX200 H-QR) trayfree Wiebetech External Raid Hard Drive system. The Raid System takes SATA hard drives and has a quad interface of eSATA, Firewire 800/400, and USB 2.0. Inserting the hard drives is a piece of cake. You open up the door and slide in the hard drive. It makes it a lot easier not having to install the hard drive into a tray or sled system first.

The major benefit of having a Raid Hard Drive system is its built in backup feature. I am using a Raid 1 or mirrored hard drive configuration. Everytime my computer writes to the external hard drive enclosure, the hardware controller in the external hard drive enclosure writes to both hard drives simultaneously. If one of the hard drives fails, I just insert another hard drive into the raided hard drive enclosure and it automatically rebuilds or copies the information from the one drive over to the other on a block by block basis. I also take the added precaution of having an additional drive that I rotate in so at any given time I have three copies of most of my data on hard drives.


Photograph ©2008 WiebeTech / www.Wiebetech.com

Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :) (more...)

Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Has Been Released! 2008-07-29

Well, it's official-- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has been released today! One of the features many hard core photoshop users can now enjoy is the dual monitor support. It also supports the ability to create custom camera profiles. I am not too familiar with that feature, but if it allows you to profile your camera-- then many of my colleagues may make the switch from Capture One to Lightroom.

I have used Lightroom from day #1-- I Beta tested both Lightroom 1.0 as well as Lightroom 2.0. Lightroom has become the industry standard in stand alone raw processors. By stand alone-- I mean separate from, lets say, photoshop, that processes raw files and does so much more. If you have Photoshop, you still probably want Lightroom for it's speed and ease of use. It was designed with photographers in mind-- with our input from beta testing! Lightroom does a fantastic job integrating in with Photoshop. If you are upgrading to Lightroom from Lightroom 1.x, the upgrade is $99 and available for immediate download from Adobe or for $94.99 through Amazon w/ free shipping starting on the 15th of August. If you are new to Lightroom and do not have Photoshop CS3, you can bundle the two from Adobe and save $150. If you already have PS CS3 or do not need it and just want Lightroom 2.0 it will cost $299

Not sure what you want to do? Adobe is offering a free Test Drive for 30 days.


The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) give a great synopsis of the new features with some great screen shots. They also have a listing of some great links to other Lightroom 2 resources.

Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :) (more...)

Cheap eats in Thailand 2008-07-30

I just came across this video from Ron Fowler, or better know to many Clevelanders as Flower Clown from a trip in 2007 to Thailand. He shows how one can get great food for only $3, it may be more now due to inflation and the declining US $.


Ron has traveled across the world sharing his clowning abilities. You can see more of his travel videos on his website He also has some video tutorials on balloon making. I have photographed and worked with Ron on different projects before and you can see a photograph of him performing at the Shaker Family Center's Family Fall Fun Fest in a previous blog post right here.

Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :) (more...)