Miscellany and a PSA

Miscellaneous shots taken on an outing January 3rd.

Great Blue Heron

Mockingbird enjoying the peaceful setting.
I always imagine myself sitting in a place like this, but can never seem to actually do it.

Snowy egret

PSA: When I previewed this post, the photo of the snowy egret looked noticeably degraded in quality from what was appearing in Lightroom and Photoshop. The blue was more of a navy and the smooth water was filled with noise. Fiddling with the export settings did not help. I eventually discovered that the "Auto Enhance" feature in Google Plus's settings was not just for photos uploaded to G+, but it's applied to blog photos, too. That Google just takes it upon themselves to mess with photos that I have painstakingly edited makes me angry. After unchecking "Auto Enhance" under Google+...Settings...Photos, I re-uploaded the image. It's much better than it was, but I still find the quality and color off from LR and PS. Here is a better blog post explaining it if you care to read further. I just want to say to Google, "Knock it off!"

Photos from January 5th:

 Trio of canoers on the Tchefuncte River.

Lake Pontchartrain, Mandeville, LA, late afternoon
All of the photos that were shot with 200 ISO and f/8 came out looking 1/2 blue and 1/2 gray.
I wish I was technically savvy enough to know why, but I just accept and appreciate these happy accidents.
Maybe it was because dark clouds started to gather and my sensor was too low on sensitivity to record the scene properly.
The only editing applied was resizing, cloning out sensor dust in the sky, and a slight lighten.

I love the way the light hit the center of the Causeway Bridge

Water's like me. It's laaazy... Boy, it always looks for the easiest way to do things.
Bob Ross (painter and host of The Joy of Painting)

Thanks for the eviction notice, Google

I know there are many more important things to fret about, but Google's decision to retire iGoogle has me pretty miffed. iGoogle has been my start page for YEARS--at least 5. At a glance I can see up to ten emails, both read and unread, the weather, news headlines, and most importantly, all the latest posts from the blogs I follow. I do not care for Google Reader's layout and there is not a comparable start page with the same type of gadgets/widgets offered by iGoogle.

They've given us 16 months to find another place, but I'm not one to wait until the last minute. I've got to find something that I can live with. Dadgummit, this is like being evicted! Thanks, Google. Not.

I've tried Netvibes, Protopage and myfaves.es. So far, Protopage has more of the elements of iGoogle, but there are not as many widgets to choose from, and several I tried were no longer offered by the developer. Adding insult to injury, the gmail widget doesn't show your read emails and doesn't deliver new mail as quickly as the iGoogle gmail gadget--kind of like the post office.

Sigh.

If Google wants to put ads on my iGoogle page, I'm cool with that. Just don't yank the service away from me! PLEEEEASE!

I can live without the weather and news headlines, but I'm most worried about Google Reader. Tell me, how do you keep up with your favorite blogs? Do you subscribe and have them delivered to your email? Do you use Google Reader? Fretting minds need to know! :)

Sincerely,

Annoyed former-Google-fan in Baton Rouge, LA