An other view of the Kobold's Cave.  The monitors visible are (left to right) Pluvius (laptop), experimental Foxconn computer (unnamed), White Dragon (old Debian system), Black Dragon (Ubuntu 10.04), Red Dragon (DSL 4.4), and the Blue Dragon's twin monitors.

   I took a few more pictures of the Kobold's Cave today.  Since my last set of pictures, I've moved some things around and added more lighting.  I had two monitors stored at the far side of the room which I moved into under utilized space in my main area.  Then there was the trick to getting a picture on all of them.  The Black Dragon is a trusty machine, and I used it the last time I took pictures—so I knew that worked.  The Red Dragon has I/O problems and won't run reliable.  Try as I might I was never able to get an operating system onto the hard drive.  I was hoping I could boot via USB, but no such luck.  None of my Ubuntu live CDs would boot either.  So I decided to go simple and got Damn Small Linux to boot and run.  I don't know the last time the White Dragon had been powered on, but it also came up without issue. 
   A few days ago I installed the rest of my LED reel lighting.  It can be seen illuminating the shelves on the far wall.  In this picture they are turned all the way up which is not how they are typically run—the lights are too bright to normally keep on high.  Note there are no clamp lights running so no colored compact florescent bulbs are on.  With the red LED rope, the two LED arm lamps and the LED reel lights I found I do not need the additional light from the CFL.  This lowers energy consumption and (naturally) heating caused by lighting.
   The red rope light (66 feet) draw 48 watts, the two LED bulbs and under cabinet strip (at full-power) draw 24 watts, and the LED reel (at full-power) draws 20 watts for a total draw of 72 watts.  However, I usually have the lights dimmed some, so the power draw is actually about 60 watts.  All the CFL together draw 113 watts, so the LED solution is much more efficient.

   Stained glass window.

   Amber in the Union Pacific dome diner # 8003 at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay.  I was never a fan of late 50ies early 60ies decour like that used in this car, but Amber loved it.  The view traveling across country while taking in a meal in this car must have been really nice.

   Cockpit of the early 20th century.

   Around 11:00 pm the first line of a storm front moved into Madison.  Upon noticing thunder, I grabbed my gear and got on my bike.  The sky was fairly active and the activity seemed to be mostly to the north east.  So I rode out on the bicycle path along John Nolen and setup my tripod.  I took 260 shots ranging from 1 to 5 seconds of exposure time.  Of those I saved 7.  By the end the lightning was dwindling, and a light rain had begun.  I packed up and headed back to the house.  From the radar images, I knew this was just the first wave of the storm and there was more to come.  So I downloaded the images from my camera and monitored the radar.
   Sure enough, the next wave of the storm rolled in.  I went upstairs to have a look at conditions and found it raining heavily.  That didn't bother me as I thought I might be able to find some cover and wait out the heavy rain to get some more shots.  However, this didn't happen.  Once in the rain I found the storm only building.  The heavy rain was obscuring all the lightning and visibility was low.  Even if there was a shot, the wind was so high I could not have kept water off the lens.  My plans for a second session had to be scrapped.  By the time the rain did stop, the skies were no longer flashing.
   The image selected for today comes from two lightning flashes.  One is over the skyline and brighter, giving a blue-white color cast to the clouds it illuminated.  The other strike was some cloud-to-cloud lightning that was (presumablly) obscured by the clouds and giving it a red-orange hue.  They happened within seconds of one an other, but not in the same exposure.

   Amber in subtle selective color.  I chose to allow color just on the wine glass which lets small hints of hue from the stained glass behind the camera.   The wine glass is already in focus, the color simply adds enhances this center point.  The subject of the image is hiding, so the fact the focus has made her softer seems fitting.