After working on the "Exploring Idyllwild" video for a month, it's now complete and uploaded to Exposureroom.com.

Runtime is approximately 14 minutes. Here's the link-

http://exposureroom.com/members/Linkloftproductions.aspx/assets/5e8d78f7458846d3bf28ca0d92c482e9/

Today I hosted a buggy run on the mountain.
The meeting point was at our house in Pine Cove.
From there the buggies drove north to an overlook
to Hemet, then to Lake Fulmer for a short walk.
Lunch was in Idyllwild, and afterwards, we drove
to Thomas Mountain, south of Idyllwild.

I put together this animated gif, which is a
brief preview of the upcoming video.

Additions to the Family

Quique and Nena

 

Monday May 18 2009 was an exciting day

for us. We welcomed two 5 week old female

kittens to our home to join the family.

 

The kittens are...Queque

(pronounced Kee Kay)

 

And Nena

(pronounced Nayna)

 

At the vet for a checkup-

 

The doc says all is well with the little ones-

 

Playing at home-

 

All that playing makes me thirsty-

 

 

Planning my next attack-

 

Feeling exhausted-

 

Nappy time-

Tuesday on the Mountain

Since Patti was at school in Palm Desert, I thought I'd take a drive in the baja.
I started out driving off the mountain to Beaumont to look around in Best Buy....but didn't
buy anything....this time. Then after dinner at Panda Express, I headed back up the mountain.
Instead of shooting plain old landscape pics, the object this time was to shoot landscape photos
with the baja in the pic. Shooting later in the afternoon gave me nice lighting.

 
The first turnout was a few miles south of Banning on 243. This overlooks Banning- 
 

At the next turnout was this memorial- 

Continuing south up 243, I stopped here for a minute- 

Then I backtracked a few hundred feet to the intersection of 243 and Poppet Rd.
This sign told me it was time to hit the brakes- 

A few feet from the big red sign was this- 

Looking south down Poppet Rd- 

10 minutes later, I drove 2 miles south to this turnoff- 

4S06...let's see where it goes- 
 

The first antenna on the south side of 4S06- 

Lots of flowers blooming- 

Coming up on the second tower- 

The end of the road is here, where I saw the largest capacity clothes hanger ever- 
 

I contacted someone in Zimbabwe with my new CB antenna- 

Random shots- 
 

 

It was getting late and my senses were telling me that hungry animals were watching me from the bushes.

I continued south on 243 a few miles and snapped this last shot-

The New Canon G10

 

 

My older Canon S3is was having focusing problems in

macro mode, and it already had been repaired a year

ago. Instead of having it repaired again, I replaced it

with a Canon G10.

 

The G10 has an all metal body and the controls are

nicely arranged. The menu is intuitive. It can be used

in full auto or full manual modes...or anywhere in between.

The ability to shoot in uncompressed RAW mode gives

better image details than with jpeg at the expense of

having larger file sizes. Larger memory cards are

recommended for shooting RAW.

 

So far I'm very happy with the purchase and highly recommend the G10.

Here are some shots from the last couple weeks-

 

       

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

We just finished making a dance music video featuring Patti's niece Sara Perez.
The music was written and performed by Patti (online name Buzz) while we lived in LA.
Camera work was by me, Greg Matson. The video is called "Falling For Sara".

The medium viewing screen is here-

http://exposureroom.com/members/Linkloftproductions.aspx/assets/d62dec08fff040f39172d42c2c6f0fc5/

I've added the embed codes to see it on a smaller screen-

Falling For Sara By Greg Matson
View in HD  Download 720p HD Version  Visit Greg Matson's ExposureRoom Videos Page

Between plowing and snow blowing, I had time

to put together some GIF images from in front

of our house.

Using Windows Live Writer

Posting to Blogspot has been less than perfect. Photos seem

to position themselves wherever they want to, and moving

them is difficult at best.Tonight I learned about Windows

Live Writer, which is a free downloadable program that allows

you to set up words and photos almost exactly where you

want them. Then the post is uploaded to your weblog...easily.

 

My first post using Live Writer was "Carnage Over the Last Week"

which came out great for a first try. The photos will be a bit

larger next time, and I need to learn how to edit an existing

post in Live Writer.....but so far so good. One cool thing is that

photos are still clickable, and open in a new window in a larger size.  

Carnage Over the Last Week

 

 

An exciting week up here in Pine Cove.

There were 2 snow storms which caused trees

to fall, power to go out, and vehicles to get stuck.  

The 3 day power outage was caused by an oak

tree that tore down 3 spans of power lines

(according to power company employees)    

5 of our trees had the top 20'- 25' snap off.  One

took out our phone and cable TV lines, and one

other tree pulled down a main upper power line

but luckily didn't break the line.

 

 

 

 

This is an example of why the trees

were snapping-

 

Between bark beetles and the drought, many

trees have been weakened and can't handle

the extra weight of snow.  Unfortunately, this

is happening too often in Pine Cove. Here's

another shot of trees that snapped from the

snow.

Half mile east of our house, we spotted

this flattened car port.

This is disappointing because I was

planning to buy one.

 

Contracted power company repairing

cables at our corner.  

 

 

Being ex- phone techs, Patti and I re attached

our downed phone cable, which pulled off the

house. Unfortunately our TV cable pulled off

the utility pole, and we had to wait almost a week

to get it re attached. Last night Time Warner techs

fumbled around on our icy road getting stuck

several times, but eventually got to work.

I was asked to help pull out a stuck Dodge truck down

the road, but without a winch, my truck couldn't

get him going. A local with a winch equipped Jeep

got the Dodge out of the rut. 

The winner of the "Crackhead of the Year Award"  goes

to whoever abandoned their brand new Ford Explorer

in front of our neighbors house at 2am Monday. It was

also blocking the road, which blocked a snow plow

from doing it's job.

 

At 8am a CHP officer came by. He  cited the car

and had it towed.  Our neighbor was happy. 

 

It wasn't all bad however. The fresh snowfall gave

me some nice photo ops.