There is a full Eclipse tonight. I’m taking pictures when we go out and uploading them. If the cloud cover stays minimal, we’re supposed to have a great view. Very mild outside too.

First picture at approximate 9:10 PM. Taken with a Fujifilm FinePix S9100, shutter speed 1/13, F4.9 (Yup, auto mode.)

The entire family piled outside. My stepmom, sister, and I spent the better part of an hour huddled in chairs taking pictures of the eclipse. My stepbrother came out briefly and took pictures too. I have pictures of all of us outside. My name would be mud if I posted those here.

Picture at 10:39 PM. We were fighting clouds during half of the evening. While this isn’t the clearest picture, I liked the effect of the slight motion blur from my heart beat… This was taken using the Night Shot feature of my camera — and a 4 *second* delay in the shutter.

The next picture was from 11:00 when the moon was in full eclipse. Amazing. It really looked red. (In fact some of my bad shots from tonight look like a picture of Mars taken through a low-magnification telescope.)

This last picture was taken at 11:20 using a small tripod on the back porch railing. I changed the aperture mode to shutter priority. It helped a little. If I had my real tripod, I could have gotten some great shots… However, it’s packed.

What I should have done was use the camera in full manual mode and focused on getting the exposure settings correct. BUT when you have to take pictures fast, you don’t always have time (or the available light source to see the buttons).

I have quite a few other pictures, but it’s a little late to process them tonight. I’ll post them tomorrow.

Quick post during lunch… There were some crazy posts on Slash Dot and Gizmodo today:

• Pentagon report investigated lasers that put voices in your head
• Brain control headset for gamers
• Microsoft’s new line of Developer Action Figures
• Leaked RIAA Training Video for Prosecuters: Find Pirates, Find Crack-Dealing Terrorist Murderers Too!

So any of that stuff sound like science fiction?