Santa Fe Mountains

Views from the Santa Fe Mountains above Santa Fe, New Mexico, part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southern-most subrange of the Rocky Mountains, on an overcast August day. Photos taken during my mom's (MALsPa's Ma, as she called herself once!) recent visit to New Mexico.





And up near at Ski Santa Fe, Santa Fe's ski area, a cool mountain stream and a little view of the forest.







"Sangre de Cristo" is Spanish for "Blood of Christ." For more about the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangre_de_Cristo_Mountains.

A Blind Woman and a Camera

I work in a photo lab, where I also sell digital cameras.

Yesterday, I had one of my more interesting experiences. A blind woman, accompanied by a helper and a seeing-eye dog, came in to purchase a camera for herself.

Yes, I sold a camera to a blind woman.

No kidding.

It would never have occurred to me that something like this would happen on this job.

She was fairly knowledgeable about computers, memory cards, etc. I sold her a memory card reader and a memory card and a camera bag. She bought a FujiFilm camera. She asked for recommendations, and I didn't really know what to recommend, so I told her that my first digital camera, purchased back in 2001, was a FujiFilm camera, and that it had held up so well that I purchased another one last year. She was an oriental woman and had heard of Fuji and knew that they made good cameras. I put one in her hands that was a particularly well-built camera, the FujiFilm Z30. It's sort of the latest in the same line as my original camera, with a sliding front cover that you can close when you aren't using the camera, to protect the lens. These are sturdy cameras that can survive being dropped -- I know that from experience!



I sold her the orange one.

I have no idea how she's going to manage to take good photos -- how does a blind person focus on the subject? But, she left quite happy.

Through A Kid's Eyes

Here's what can happen when you put a digital camera into the hands of a kid.



Photo by Ish, age 7.

USB Memory Card Readers

Another problem I see mentioned often at Linux forums is that people have trouble connecting digital cameras to their Linux systems to transfer photos over. The problem is that most cameras come ready for Windows or Mac, but not for Linux.

An easy solution: Buy a memory card reader, remove the memory card from your camera, insert it into the card reader, and plug it into a USB port of your computer.

I'm using a Targus SD card reader that I found at Wal-Mart for $8.88, plus tax. When I plug it into a USB port on my computer while using Mepis, I get the following pop-up window:



I click "OK" to "Open in New Window" and the Konqueror file browser opens up, showing the files that are stored on the memory card. Couldn't be easier. Then it's a simple matter to copy the photos over to a directory on my hard drive.

Other distros might not give you a pop-up window when you insert the card reader, but it's usually not much more difficult to access the files than with Mepis. You may have to click on a desktop icon, or mount the file system. I haven't had any trouble getting to my photos using any distro, though.

Memory card readers are great to have even if you don't use Linux. I first started using them with Windows simply to save my digital camera's batteries from getting used while I had it connected to the computer. The thing to remember if you use a card reader in Windows: When you're finished, use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon at the right side of your taskbar before unplugging the card reader.

In Mepis and other Linux distros, you'll want to unmount the file system before unplugging the card reader. In Mepis, I simply right-click on the card reader's desktop icon and click on "Safely Remove."



Ubuntu and Mint handle all of this automatically, so with those distros you can simply unplug the card reader once you've closed the file manager.