Post 445: whoa! time to stand back

What a day! Andy was especially clever today avoiding his medicine, though my brother (more clever by far!) trapped him by the open back door by whistling like a bird. That got Andy’s attention long enough for my brother to snatch him up. Poor baby!

I’ve had Internet issues and television issue the past few weeks that came to a head today. Worked out through the provider’s automated help service, I learned the two-way coaxial splitter was the issue. What?! Not unlike cars, anything I know about computers seems to come from bad experiences, failures of parts within the larger device. “Two-way coaxial splitter” is one of those concepts, things, I just want to work. I could give a flip that there is such a thing — and truly don’t want to know there is such a thing! — let alone have to find out they can go bad and I had to locate one of these unicornish devices before I could continue on.

Tried to get one really nice photo of Dougy today. This is the sort of thing I got: Dougy’s closed eye portrait brought on by his knowledge that the camera sometimes flashes a bright light…!

Oh, once I re-established connections with/through the two-way coaxial splitter gizmo, the television turned on immediately without any annoying glitches (like it’s been doing) and the computer had instant Internet connectivity. Even videos worked faster on YouTube. “Two-way coaxial splitter” is a new thing to me, but I’ve come to accept it as good. It’s surprisingly common, too, unlike unicorns! I located one with my first telephone call. Whew!

Yes, more photo failures with Dougy!

My brother has a cellphone that needed minutes added. Grr! Came at the same time I was learning to know what the two-way coaxial splitter was. Too much technology at once! Should be simple. The first 23-number code I punched in was just the start….! (My brother’s daughter’s boyfriend patiently lead me through the process.) Step two was to punch in a 27-number code. Thank you sweet Jesus! The phone was happy with that code, too, and the minutes magically appeared on his phone! Curious, though, that if every human being alive had a unique number, starting with 1 and ending with seven billion whatever, no one would have a number longer than 10 digits long! Clever monkeys, my rump.

Hee! Hee! The challenge just gets bigger and bigger. At least Dougy’s in focus. Isn’t he?

Did I mention I broke the glass front of my stove the other day? Why a smoked piece of safety glass was incorporated into the design I don’t know. Seems kind of impractical. Good design? Aesthetically pleasing? Stupid use of a delicate material for the application? Who knows. Damn inconvenient, but the oven and stove still work fine. In time, I’ll figure out what to do with the oven door without the picture window. I suppose I’ll end up buying a new door since just replacing the glass would be too simple. Yep. In the meantime, it looks pretty primitive, just raw metal and parts. Some door.

Hey! Dougy’s eyes are open and he actually looks pretty good in this photo!

Well, Dougy’s photo with open eyes is a bit “soft-focused” but that may be as good as it gets. What the heck! I tried one more time!

dougy 1 june 24 2014

Heck, that’s about as good as it’s going to get today. So I tried taking a photo of Andy.

Yep, Andy turned his head to avoid getting flashed, too. Time to call it quits. There’s always another day.

Post 408: a quiet day at home

It’s overcast and cool today, the sort of day you can get loads done in the yard. Or nothing done inside! I decided to give myself the inside option.

The boys, too, are in a quiet mood. andy 5-17-14

Andy terrorized the place earlier this morning, trying to “chase” a bird that flew over the house from the bird feeder on the lane. He used me as a stepping stone up to the window ledge by my computer. I guess he saw the bird again because his tail was twitching furiously!

dougy 5-17-14

Dougy chose a less vigorous activity after he tore up the place earlier grabbing under the recliner to catch the feather toy I flipped under there. The top of the cat carriage still has its attractions for the boys, but Dougy’s the one snoozing there today.

Here’s another photo, one that I liked because of its impressionistic presentation of Dougy on the cat carriage:

impressionistic dougy

If you fail at taking a good photo, call the bad ones “art”! 😉

Post 356: Andy’s and Dougy’s teddy bear cuts revealed!

Andy and Dougy succumbed to hunger and revealed themselves. I took some photos to show you their groomer’s art.

Andy: What a pretty boy!

I started to take another photo of Andy, and Dougy walked into the scene. Oops! Flashed! Dougy hates flash cameras, and this little accident made the photo after this one very difficult to take.

Dougy (in front) and Andy: Dougy got flashed!

Now, this is more like it.

Dougy: Isn't he pretty, too? The teddy bear look is much kinder to the cat thaqn a lion cut, which makes the cat look cartoonish.

Dougy: Isn’t he pretty, too? The teddy bear look is much kinder to the cat than a lion cut, which makes the cat look cartoonish.

…from the Persian Rescue of Johannesburg blogsite, here’s a Persian with a lion cut. This particular cat was a rescue and was severely matted.

Cat grass for the boys is something I need to cultivate more regularly. After the stuff I put them through this week – a spa day for cats… – they deserve something extra and special.

Also, the cat grass is coming up., Andy is especially appreciative of grass.

Post 258: paparazzi problems

Andy and Dougy know one thing: That black rectangular thing pops a bright light when it’s pointed at you. Dougy gave me a cutey pie look today. I brought out the camera, and he did what the boys do every time: He closed his eyes at the exact moment the flash went off! So much for cute! Doug 12 18 2013

my little master

I spent much longer writing a letter to my Amsterdam friends than I thought it would take this morning/afternoon. All that time, Andy pestered me.

“Whaaat,” I whined, “…what do you want, kitty?”

Nothing I did or did for him settled him down. Constant interruptions.

Andy was a pest today.

About halfway through the letter, I took this photo of Andy. Not a brilliant piece of art, mind you. I took it with my webcam. Hit the button to take the photo and three seconds later, it makes the picture. A lot can happen in three seconds when you are taking snapshots of a cat! This was a best of several efforts. That’s how bad the rest were! Ha!

…in case you think I was lying about the other photo being the “best”, here are the five I took before I got the “good” one.

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tkmorin – This is the best one of the other five for eyes, but there was just too little detail on Andy’s face to make something decent of it. You barely can see his partly closed eyes.

Part of the problem, too, is in all the others his head’s turned or his eyes are closed.

vicissitudes of cat photography

One thing about digital cameras, you make a crap photo, and all you’ve wasted are the few electrons it took to create the image on the memory card. Occasionally, though, mistakes yield a potentially “good” photo that, with a little help from Photoshop, give the false impression you know how to handle a camera to make true art!

For example:

Impressionistic, “arty” photo of Andy and Dougy in the window, or a failed effort to get a focused photo of Andy and Dougy in the window, heavily processed in Photoshop.

Let’s face it, you can tell a cat, but not much! Andy looked cute in his favorite perch, but low light (flash went off each time I attempted to get a candid shot) and a wary cat from all the flashes of light in his face didn’t make for a happy subject. (Andy’s always wary, thanks to all those baths he got as a kitten.) Oh well, even a surly Andy is cute. He can’t help it!

I don’t know if anyone mistakes this for “art”, but this Andy portrait sure as heck took some major Photoshopping to capture his surly, little essence!

My digital camera will select an ultra-slow “shutter” speed for flash photos in low light. Slowly…! Before the flash goes off, your cat subject usually leaves Dodge to do something else, probably naughty and much more interesting! Not for this one, though, so I have to destroy it and everyone who reads this blog to assure no one knows I ever took a bad kitty shot. Never!

Photoshop couldn’t help this one of Dougy. I tried, man! I tried!

Another benefit of digital photography is the crap photos, once deleted, exist no more. There aren’t any negatives to betray the reality that my cat photo everyone admires is one of dozens taken that I couldn’t Photoshop into submission. I guarantee, very few of my photos are virgins.

Patience, persistence, practice, prayer, Photoshop, and a good stout pair of woven stainless steel mesh shark-resistant gloves yield great cat photos every time! If you lack any of those, however, try making videos of the little darlings. I bet I scrapped out five minutes of videos to get this one short vignette:

Notice the thumbnail photo that appears on the YouTube still is, well, pretty darn much like the first photo in this post, only I couldn’t run it through Photoshop to make it “purr-ty”!

=(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)=

[NB ~ Not unlike cat photography, this text went through 21 revisions – knock on wood! – before I called it polished enough for public viewing. Cat prose is much like cat photography: Patience, persistence, practice, prayer, proofread function, and a good stout pair of woven stainless steel mesh shark-resistant gloves yield great cat prose every time! But is it great literature? Dun-dun-dunnnn!]

=(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)=

You don’t believe me? Here’s a Screen Print of the revision record for this simple, little post. In addition to the 5 P’s for successful cat photos and videos is the “P” of perfection. Nothing’s too good for my readers! Rats! This addition makes another revision! “Argh!” as Charlie Brown used to say.